Windows Home Server 2011 - Noone makes Drivers for it......

ArcticWhitefur · May 12, 2013

So, im building a Home Server, this idea has been meantioned by linus one or twice as well as TTL if any of you know them or him.. Well Windows Home Server 2011. What the absolute...... Noone makes any official supported drivers for this what the hell. I want to RAID but theres a chance my mobo wont because as of yet I have not found one that has drivers designed for 2011, RAID cards in excess of £800 GBP DO NOT have official 2011 server drivers. :( Is this a dead and must avoid server OS? Before I drop money on HDD and RAID card I wanna now that I can actually set the damn thing up working with drivers that are guaranteed to work not oh use Win7 64-bit drivers it should be ok (apparently 7 64 drivers are your best option to install and hope it works, if not try the Vista or XP drivers). Has anyone used Home server 2011 and if so what did you do for drivers? Especially in the case of RAID cards as RAID 5 kills most onboard mobo RAID with incredibly slow speeds sometimes lower than a single HDD on its own, they just cannot handle it.

I don't want to have to use 2003 or 2008 but those I have found supported RAID cards for, but aren't they becoming obsolete now due to there age and with 2012 essentials now added to the mix? Also I should mention I have no experience with Ubuntu or anything like that, I would prefer to use windows but what is with the lack of any driver support?

Microsoft has included multiple drivers for NIC and Storage etc but there official solution if not DOWNLOAD the drivers from the manufacturer. I can't find a manufacturer that has hardware supporting 2011 :/ GG Microsoft.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/add-drivers-2.aspx

dalekphalm · May 13, 2013

Hi, I personally use WHS 2011 as my current server OS, with an LSI RAID controller.

In terms of drivers, if no specific WHS 2011 driver exists (which, lets be honest, almost none exist), you should try one of the following:

- If it's a desktop/consumer level device (motherboard, etc), use the Windows 7 x64 Driver.

- If it's a enterprise level device (RAID card, or server motherboard, etc), use the Windows Server 2008 R2 Driver.

- If the device has drivers for both 2008 R2 & Win7, try 2008 R2 first, since WHS 2011 IS a modified version of Server 2008, then try Win7 if that doesn't work.

Note: Some drivers, that will otherwise work, have an exception tag in their .ini file that says "Only works with x OS", or alternatively "Does NOT work with y OS", then you may need to edit the .ini file (intel drivers are like that sometimes).

In my case, I'm using a Socket 775 board with a G41 chipset. WHS 2011 found most of the basic drivers itself, no problem. I had to download and install the RAID card driver, but it had no issues either.