When you’re finished, place the drive back into the MediaSmart or DataVault server. Remove the drive from the server and attach it to another PC (I used Windows 7) and then erase the primary partition. In order to have the MediaSmart or DataVault boot off the Thumb Drive for installation, you’ll need to completely erase the primary hard drive (the lowest one in the MediaSmart/DataVault server). Where VAILSERVER is the name of the server, Passw0rd is the server password and some password hint is the hint to remind you of what you set your password to. Inside the cfg.ini, you’ll need to answer questions, so design your file like this: The unattend file is called cfg.ini, and needs to also be in the root of the thumbdrive with the WHS 2011 DVD image on it. As you probably know, the MediaSmart or DataVault server doesn’t have a video input, so you’re going to need to do the install via an “unattend file”. This makes the Thumb drive and the DVD look identical in Windows Explorer. Next up you’ll have to copy the Windows Home Server 2011 DVD to the root of the disk. I already have instructions on how to do that here. First you’ll need to format it and make it bootable. I’m actually using the Data Traveller by Kingston. The image is slightly bigger than 4GB, so I had to step up to an 8GB thumb drive. The first step here will be to prepare your media, usually on your client computer.

(I hear it works on the ex48x, but I only tried the ex49x) So if you’ve got the grey top, you’ve got a lot more work to do that isn’t covered here.

Also, I think the MicroServer is quieter than the MediaSmart (at least the ex475 that I had)Īdditionally you’ll have to use the EX490/495 or DataVault as Vail requires at least 2GB of RAM, which aren’t in earlier models of the MediaSmart servers (e.g. But it’s still a cute little form factor. I took this opportunity to get an HP ProLiant MicroServer, plus it does at least RAID1 (Mirror) where the MediaSmart or DataVault servers cannot do any form of RAID. Well, I’m positive this is something that HP will not support, so don’t even think of calling them if you go down this road, but I figured it’d be fun if you wanted to continue to use the same hardware.

Microsoft windows home server 2011