How To… Add A USB Hard Drive to Windows Home Server

One of the coolest features of Windows Home Server is the ease with which you can add additional hard drives to the pool of storage you have available on your server.

Windows Home Server makes no reference to traditional hard drive letters – you simply have a poll of storage available to store data on, spread across whatever hardware you throw at WHS – internal hard drives, or external.

This How To… will focus on the relatively simple task of adding an external USB hard drive to Windows Home Server’s storage pool. For this task, we’re going to use a new Western Digital 250 Gb “My Book” USB Hard Drive.

Say hello!

So, let’s get started.

Step 1: Checking Your Existing Storage

Firstly, log into the Windows Home Server Console on one of your home computers, and select the Server Storage tab at the top of the console. Here’s mine.

 As you can see, I already have 2 500Gb internal hard drives installed in my server, but you know, you never can have too much storage available!!

Step 2: Unpack your External Hard Drive, Plug in the Power Cable and Attach the USB Cable to your Home Server

Here’s my drive sitting up above the server. Hey, they look a little like cousins.

(Okay, I’ll admit it’s a little untidy – in a couple of weeks time, we’re starting on house renovations which will include Ethernet throughout and a new home for my home server and router underneath the stairs. That carpet’s from the previous house owners and will be the first thing to go too )

Step 3: Check Your Windows Home Server Console

You should now be able to see your new drive listed in the Server Storage tab of the Windows Home Server Console, under Non Storage Hard Drives.

There’s my new hard drive listed at the top. But wait! You’re not done yet. Windows Home Server knows it’s there, but it won’t utilise the drive until you “Add” it to the storage pool and the drive is formatted. So let’s do that now.

Step 4: Click on the External Hard Drive to Highlight It and Select Add

The Add a Hard Drive Wizard will pop up. Click Next.

Step 5: Format the New Hard Drive

Windows Home Server needs to format the new hard drive before using it.

Note: if you are using an old hard drive with existing data on it, it will be deleted at this point. If you wish to keep the data on the drive, cancel the wizard at this point, and back up the data before proceeding.

Click Finish to format the drive and complete the wizard.

Formatting….. (now’s not a good time to remember the only copy of your wedding photos were on that drive).

Format complete. And yes, I too would love to know what happened to the missing 18Gb of my so-called 250Gb hard drive.

Step 6: Check the Server Storage Page in the Windows Home Server Console

There we go, all complete. Windows Home Server has recognised the External Hard Drive and has added it into the storage pool. Job done!