Lothar’s Roundup II

Windows Home Server requires, at least, a 1Ghz processor and 512MB of RAM. However, my machine only has 448MB of RAM, and it still works fine and fast. I run WHS on an AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (1400Mhz) processor. The rest of your hardware requirements are fairly irrelevant, since the WHS machine is designed to run as a headless server (so no keyboard, mouse, and monitor); for instance, even though my machine has a GeForce 6200 with 128MB of RAM, I use the standard VGA driver. Only during the installation process do you need a keyboard/mouse/monitor. If you plan on using external hard drives, Microsoft advises against using USB 1.1, because "the older USB standard is significantly slower and less reliable for storage, and it is not supported on Windows Home Server."

There are two versions currently available, the Pentium E2140 (1.6GHz) and the E2160 (1.8GHz). Clocked at 1.8GHz the E2160 matches the E4300 in terms of clock speed while featuring half as much L2 cache. The E2140 on the other hand is now the slowest desktop "Core 2" processor, clocked at just 1.6GHz. Although list price for both of these CPUs is slightly cheaper, for the time being retail cost around the web is about $99 for the E2160, while the E2140 is priced at around $84.

Just like a USB memory stick, SSDs use a type of memory chip that can continue to store data even when it has no power. Having no moving parts makes accessing information extremely quick – it just takes a few milliseconds to calculate the correct portion of memory to read/write. This is in contrast to normal HDDs that use magnetic particles on spinning disks (or platters) to store data. For them to access a piece of information the disc has to 'spin-up', the read/write head (the thing you hear making a clicking noise when your HDD is in use) has to be moved to the right track on the disk, and then the disk has to spin to the right point on that track. This adds a significant amount of delay to the process of reading and writing data, so much so that even the fastest consumer hard drives have access times 20 times slower than this Samsung SSD. Moreover, the energy used to spin the disks and move the read/write heads creates a fair amount of heat and also draws significantly more power than an SSD.

Western Digital Corp. today announced that its My Book^TM family of storage appliances is now available with capacities of 1.5 TB and 750 GB. From remote access and sharing anywhere in the world to simple add-on storage and back up, the My Book family meets a variety of needs generated by today's increasingly large files from digital pictures, HD (high definition) video and music. WD's My Book family includes My Book World, My Book Pro, My Book Premium and My Book Essential Editions.