Help with BI server Re-build

[samplenhold]

Looking for your expert advice as I am about to re-build my BI server. It is only used for BI.

My old system has served me well since I built it in 2018. It is small and only supports three HDD’s and I would have to jump through a few hoops to get WIN 11 on it. Not to mention that I have not jumped on the AI and LPR database bandwagons yet due to needing more power. After my daughter passed back in September in our house, I realized that I need much more HDD storage – I need more than two weeks of video stored. It is always something happening that points out your shortcomings in your systems.

I need your opinions on several issues as described below.

I bought a motherboard that has 6 SATA ports so that I can have 6 HDDs. It also has 3 PCIe M.2 slots (one 5.0 x4 mode and two 4.0 x4 mode). It has 4 PCIe expansion slots (one 5.0 x16 slot, one 4.0 x16 supports x4 mode, and two 4.0 x16 supports x1 mode). Bought a new M.2 Boot drive which is a WD Black 2280 PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe SSD.

Do you know there are very few cases that can support six or more HDDs? Well, I found one that has space for TWELVE 3.5” HDDs and three 2.5” SSDs.

My current system has 3 WD Purple HDDs, 1 M.2 boot 'C' drive (PCIe 3.0 x4), and two WD Blue SSDs for storing video and JPGs. It also has a graphics card and a secondary NIC (RJ45) PCIe expansion card. All of this will be moved to the new system.

My plan, and please comment, is:

• Put the new M.2 in the 5.0 M.2 slot. Move the old M.2 (3.0 x4) into one of the 4.0 x4 M.2 slots. I will have to mirror the old M.2 into the new M.2 so that it will boot from the new, faster and larger one. This will be the ‘C’ drive.
• The existing three WD purple drives will take up three SATA ports.
• The two WD blue SSDs will take up two SATA ports. Ultimately the data on these will be moved to the old M.2 PCIe 3.0 drive after it has been cloned to the new one. That will free up those two SATA ports.
• Purchase three more WD purple drives, when they are available and hopefully cost less. In the meantime, I have a few WD Blue HDDs I could use for that purpose.
• Existing GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card will go into the 5.0 x16 PCIe expansion slot.
• The existing secondary NIC (RJ45) will go into one of the 4.0 x16 (1x mode) PCIe expansions slots.

That would leave me two PCIe expansion slots to use for other things, like maybe a SATA 3.0 expansion card or an HBA SAS port card to handle more WD Purple HDDs at a later date.

All the above is pretty straightforward. Now for the things that I really need help with.

• I plan on just moving the WIN 10 OS over to the new machine using the old boot M.2 drive. Then updating to WIN 11. I see no advantage to updating the old machine to WIN 11 first.
• How do I clone the old boot M.2 drive into the new M.2 boot drive so that it will boot from that drive? What software to use? I do not think I can just do a simple copy of the drive since it is a boot drive with a boot sector.
• What do I have to do for Blue Iris to make sure my license is intact on the new server?
• Since the executable is on the old boot drive (‘C’ drive) I should not have to reinstall BI, right? What about all of my settings? They should be OK, come right over, right?

Is there anything else I am not covering? Please give me your opinions here. It has been a long time since I have done anything like this. I have built my wife and myself PCs over the years. Just built myself a new machine since my old one died back in November. That was straightforward as I just installed a new version of WIN 11 so I did not have to deal with cloning a drive.

 

[Bruce_H]

If you are building a "New" BI machine why try to start with a transferred OS drive, why not just install a clean copy of Win11 and leave all the Win10 garbage that has probably collected!

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

If you are building a "New" BI machine why try to start with a transferred OS drive, why not just install a clean copy of Win11 and leave all the Win10 garbage that has probably collected!

+1

Windows is not as bad as it used to be, but the OS performance does slow down as the age of the install increases. Fresh install of 11 would be the ideal.

Be aware... if you do a brand new install, remember you'll need to deactivate BI on the old drive in order to activate it on the new drive

 

[biggen]

I agree with the others. Just install Win 11 fresh. Export your BI settings first from the old installation, deactivate BI on old installation, install Win 11 on new system, import your settings. Done.

Another thing, you can use pcpartpicker.com to customize what you are looking for hardware wise. For example, here is a listing of all the cases that support from 10-20 internal 3.5" drives from across the internet. The Darkrock is popular with the homeserver crowd.

Adding HDD to the system via an expansion card is a breeze. I have one of the LSI 8i HBA cards (can't remember the exact model). It can handle 8 SATA drives on its own via two ports with the appropriate breakout cables.

 

[iwanttosee]

Proxmox it. Never have to reinstall windows again when you transfer your BI to new hardware.

 

[biggen]

Proxmox it. Never have to reinstall windows again when you transfer your BI to new hardware.

+1 to this but would be a significant learning curve for someone who has never used Proxmox or Linux in general.

 

[samplenhold]

The Darkrock is popular with the homeserver crowd.

I have purchased all I need, but thanks. The case I got is the Darkrock Clasico MAX.

Just install Win 11 fresh. Export your BI settings first from the old installation, deactivate BI on old installation, install Win 11 on new system, import your settings. Done.

Was trying to avoid paying for a new copy of WIN 11 by upgrading the old WIN 10 to Win 11.

 

[wittaj]

I have purchased all I need, but thanks. The case I got is the Darkrock Clasico MAX.


Was trying to avoid paying for a new copy of WIN 11 by upgrading the old WIN 10 to Win 11.

You could by updating to Win11 and then reformatting the whole drive with Media Creation Tool for Win11 and then setup BI and get rid of all the excess junk that would still be floating around from Win10 and all the prior BI versions.

 

[biggen]

You could by updating to Win11 and then reformatting the whole drive with Media Creation Tool for Win11 and then setup BI and get rid of all the excess junk that would still be floating around from Win10 and all the prior BI versions.

This is the way.

 

[samplenhold]

Adding HDD to the system via an expansion card is a breeze. I have one of the LSI 8i HBA cards (can't remember the exact model). It can handle 8 SATA drives on its own via two ports with the appropriate breakout cables.

Read this article on HBA cards and it implies that using the motherboard's SATA ports is not as efficient as using the HBA connections to the drives. I do not know enough about this to say either way. What do you think?

Would it be better to just add an HBA card and run all of my HDDs through it and not use the motherboard's SATA ports?

MSN

 

[biggen]

Read this article on HBA cards and it implies that using the motherboard's SATA ports is not as efficient as using the HBA connections to the drives. I do not know enough about this to say either way. What do you think?

Would it be better to just add an HBA card and run all of my HDDs through it and not use the motherboard's SATA ports?

MSN

Onboard SATA is fine IMO. You won't be maxing out read/write capability anyway. I wouldn't add one until you find you need it when you run out of SATA ports on the MB.