I am confused about the loss of drive extender (versus Windows Home Server 2011) and what that means, practically speaking, in a RAID array setup that I want to convert over to Windows Server 2012 (Essentials).
I currently have a custom Windows Home Server 2011 configured as:
Drive 0 (C:\) - has WHS system and programs
Drives 1, 2, 3 and 4 (combined into 1 dynamic disk volume, RAID 5, formatted NTFS; all done through windows not hardware RAID) - has all user data and most importantly about 1TB of media that is virtually impossible to backup without getting a fiber channel tape system I can't afford!!
This machine is headless too.
If I get Windows Server 2012 (Essentials), I would plan to install on Drive 0 (to be safe, I would probably remove my RAID array so there was no change of overwriting). Then, I would reinstall the RAID array. Other than going through the time consuming task of reinitializing the array (which I already had to do once when my movers unplugged the server before I could shut it down, and then dropped the server and scrambled disks 1-4; thank god I used RAID 5 instead of just RAID 0!!)... I assume my data drives would reappear without any problem? Or not?
I don't care at all about losing my system setup, and having to reconfigure everything. I can handle that. But losing my RAID array would be a disaster.
JeffN