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There are other DriveExtender plugins - none free, although CoveCube have said theirs will cost around $25 - but CoveCube's is the simplest to use. The whole reason for going with WHS 2011 instead of FreeNAS or OpenMediaVault is a RAID-Z / DriveExtender style add-in for WHS 2011 from CoveCube called StableBit DrivePool. More at this link at if you're interested.
![windows home server 2011 cfg.ini windows home server 2011 cfg.ini](https://i0.wp.com/moviesgamesandtech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/image28.png)
Essentially it involves creating a cfg.ini file with some keys on another USB stick and plugging both in.
![windows home server 2011 cfg.ini windows home server 2011 cfg.ini](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GbyctYMnyRo/XYDgCR5tbSI/AAAAAAAAB78/3xs1gHqsMD8svymJLjA81TtAbCC4XsTZwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/image8.png)
Which is easy enough but installing WHS 2011 on any drive with less than 160GB requires a few workarounds.
Windows home server 2011 cfg.ini windows#
Since there's no optical drive, loading Windows has to be done via USB. Check JohnnyGuru's review of the PicoPSUs and adapters. The reason for using a 19.5V adapter is that the WI variant of the PicoPSU has better efficiency and stabilty at 19V. I got hold of a Dell P30 DC jack and soldered that to the PicoPSU, so that I could use the Dell PA-3E power brick ( best fanless 90W adapter one can find ). The motherboard had another whiny 40mm fan so off that went, to be replaced with a Nexus Real Silent 120mm fan mounted on top, with a Zalan FanMate2 keeping it at 600 rpm. If you decided to use this case, you need to think and plan ahead, with careful attention especially to routing cables. In fact the case doesnt have any removable trays, motherboard or otherwise, so fitting everything in, even with the PSU removed, is a pain. The case does have a mounting for a 2.5" SSD under the removable drive bays but it is incredibly fiddly putting anything there. The CFI case is really basic ( that's the flip side of cheap ) and I think at some point I wish I had gone for the mSATA SSD. In retrospect I'd have chosen a better case or then gone ahead with the HP N40L. The case also has a 120mm fan that I removed and replaced with a 140mm Thermalright TY-140 fan. Not only is it noisy because of the small 40mm fan but it takes up space. I started off by removing the Shuttle style 200W PSU from the CFI case. Power: Dell PA-3E 19.5v/90W laptop power supply Motherboard: Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350, with 5x SATA6, 1x eSATA and 2x USB 3.0 ports I also scavenged an old PicoPSU and a Dell laptop brick, perfect because it means the system would be a lot more efficient. Using an mSATA SSD saves a lot of space and makes the build more compact, which can be important with cases like the CFI ( more on that below ) In retrospect, I'd have used an mSATA SSD, I believe Scan does them cheap - the OCZ Nocti 60GB for example is around £75. I had an old SSD lying around, a Crucial 64GB C300, and ended up using that for the build. And Kingston is even cheaper if you shop around. RAM was an easy choice - 8GB of DDR3 SO-DIMMs are quite cheap at Crucial, around £35. The CFI won because LinITX are doing them £82 currently ( Remember I said this was to be as low cost as possible ? ) In any case, the two choices were the CFI A7879 and the Chenbro ES34169. Although now that the NAS has been running for some time, I don't really think the removable drive caddies were that important ( Oh well. I wanted to keep costs as low as possible and also have removable drive caddies. In the end, I saw Pixmania do an offer for the Sapphire E350 Pure Fusion Mini £83 and went for that. The problem with the Intel motherboards is that there's nothing with 5x SATA ports for less than £100. Mind you, both are a lot slower than the Turion-II used in the N40L. I considered the Intel Atom D2700 motherboards - these are cheap and at 2.13 GHz the CPU gets a better Passmark score than the AMD E350 Zacate. What I wanted was something like FlexRAID, DLNA, 4 hotswap bays and something that was super low power (Economy 7 prices are daylight robbery.
![windows home server 2011 cfg.ini windows home server 2011 cfg.ini](http://pctechnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Angry-Birds-Wallpaper-3.jpg)
Other than that, the N40L is a sweet deal with the £100 cashback from HP. I considered the HP N40L Proliant Microserver and the only thing bothering me was the non hot-swap drive bays. I recently decided to give up my Netgear Stora and move to a NAS.