Ask the Home Server Guy – Largest drive as the System Drive

Someone on twitter asked a question and I thought that some of you may be interest in my answer. So in the off chance that you don't follow me on twitter (which I'm sure in not the case), I've posted the question here. I also can explain it a little better when I'm not restricted to a 140 char answer.

I've heard that when building a WHS system, you should use your largest drive as your system drive. It has something to do with the "landing zone" and copying large files. Is that true?

First , let me explain what a "landing zone" is (in the context of the Windows Home Server OS, not a drive's physical landing zone). When you a copy file to a folder share, WHS needs to store the file somewhere before distributing it to other drives either by moving it or copying it (creating two copies if folder duplication is turned on). With the original WHS v1, the landing zone was drive D: on the physical drive 0 (or system disk).

With PP1, this was changed to be the drive with the least amount of space. Later the files would likely be balanced to another drive. The thinking here was that groups of files would at least start off on the same physical disk.

PP2 changed this once again. WHS now uses the drive with the most space as the landing zone for a given file. This assures that large files will get the best chance to be copied to a share.

So to answer the twitter user's question, using the largest drive as the system partition is not necessary if you are worried about the landing zone. However, I pointed out that upgrading a data drive is much easier than upgrading a system drive. So if you have a 1TB drive and a couple of puny 500GB drives and you think you may want to upgrade to the new a behemoth 2 TB drives some day, go ahead and put your largest drive as the system drive. You will get more mileage out of your system that way.

Remember you can ask a question of the Home Server guy too. Just send an email to . I'm sorry that I've been a slacker getting to them in the past, but there's been that whole new baby thing and all. :)