Re: Dell partition choices for SBS2003 R2 Std pre-installed

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Yeah I've seen that same "do it 3 times" advice myself. But I'm a
consultant billing hourly for this, so there are some pretty compelling
ecomomic reasons why I may try to just get it right the first time. We'll
just have to see how confusing it is. :-)

-Rich

"catphishum" <catphishum@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1172850904.382248.82150@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi Rich - I'm an SBS newbie of sorts, with about 5 months of admin' of
an SBS box under my belt. The recommended practice for installing SBS
for someone unfamiliar with it, is to do it three times. The first
time just to see what happens and get your hands dirty, the second to
take some detailed notes on what is going on and further your
knowledge of the system, and the third to be your production
install.

I did it four times, with the next to last being a planned disaster
recovery and the fourth being production. I agree w/the experts that
this advice is sound, as it increased my knowledge of how to properly
install SBS, and restore from backup. After all this practice, I can
honestly say that a full reinstall of the server OS and data would
take me about 5-6 hours. If you are worried about wasting time, that
is all the more reason to scratch install two or three times before
production.

For your partitions, I did a RAID5 with four 150GB drives and let Dell
do what they wanted since I was planning on wiping the drive any way.
On the fourth install, I finally settled on a 50GB OS partition and
the rest went to the data partition. it has worked well, and our C:\
still has about 40GB to spare. I don't see us needing the other 40GB
anytime soon, but just in case, I went with 50. We are not big data
hounds, so I could spare the space....

Also, if you are ordering Dell, get the Intel NICs and disable the
onboard Broadcom's in the bios when you get the machine. Google this
NG for the reason why....good luck!


On Mar 2, 8:29 am, "Rich Roller" <rich@*REMOVE-THIS*r2c.com> wrote:
For a Dell server I will order TODAY there are 4 parition choices. I
want
to choose the best one, and in particular I want the C: partition to be
big
enough to last, and I also want to separate the user data so that when
they
fill up the user data volume it won't affect the OS. The drive size I'm
likely to get is 250GB.

Dell.com's choices for "O/S partition" are:

1. "None"
2. "16GB OS Partition Override for Microsoft OS Options"
3. "20GB OS Partition Override for Microsoft OS Options"
4. "Maximum Partition Size Override for Microsoft Windows Factory
Installed"

Options 2 & 3 seem pretty clear, but 1 & 4 are not. I spoke today w/ two
Dell reps (sales & tech) and they contradicted each other. One guy said
that "None" will give me a 250GB C: and that "Maximum" would take the MS
defaults, and the other guy said the opposite.

Q1: Does anyone happen to know what the truth about 1 & 4 is? (I realize
this is a good question for Dell but yesterday I spent over an hour on
the
phone
and neither rep was expert enough or convincing enough for me)

Q2: Would a 20GB C: be comfortably ample for SBS2003 if I try to direct
all
user data including all SBS-related data (Exchange, SharePoint, etc) to
separate
volume(s) in the remaining 230GB? From my experience w/ WS2003, a 20GB
C: would be ample for the long-run, but I'm not sure about SBS2003.

Q4: If not, and if I want to make a C: of say 30GB, do you think the only
safe way would be to format the drive and reinstall SBS from scratch? I
really do NOT want to do that for a couple of reasons, all related to it
taking more time & inviting possible reinstall problems. I am also NOT
likely to use a 3rd party partition re-sizing utility.

Thanks in advance.

-Rich




.

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