"Dynamic Disk": Portability?

[PeteCresswell]

XP's Dynamic Disk option is starting to look attractive to me.

Got a home media server PC with two 1-tb drives: one for recordings,
the other for movies.

MCE is not involved.

No backups. This is just TV shows and movies for which I have the
original discs.
If it gets hosed, it gets hosed.... an inconvenience, but not a big
deal.

'twood be convenient to have three 1-tb drives which are combined to
look like a single 3-tb drive and have movies in one directory and
recordings in another - which would, among other things, automagically
balance usage among the physical drives.

Questions:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Suppose the PC in question bites the big one - as in mobo going up
in smoke?
Now I've got three physical drives that need tb moved to a new XP
box.
Will they magically come up on the new box as a single "Dynamic
Disk"?
Or is the data hosed?

2) If I decide to go the Dynamic Disk route, will I need to back up my
existing data
and then copy it to the new "Dynamic Disk"? Or will the process
preserve
the data?

3) Should I be thinking about Windows Home Server instead? ( rumored
tb $100 at
EggHead) If so, why?

4) Same question as 3, but Windows Server (which I already have a
license for
by virtue of an MSDN set).
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[(PeteCresswell)]

Per philo:

In theory you can import a dynamic drive
but I've seen a lot of posts on Usenet where people have had problems.

I'd avoid the use

How about whatever magic "Home Server" and regular Windows Server
work to make multiple drives appear as one?

Same deal?

 

[sgopus]

I second Philo's opinion, dynamic disks just have too many issues, even if
loss of data is no biggy, the headache of regaining the use of the disks adds
to the issue, I'd stay with basic format and get a raid controller if that's
what you want.

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per sgopus:

I second Philo's opinion, dynamic disks just have too many issues, even if
loss of data is no biggy, the headache of regaining the use of the disks adds
to the issue, I'd stay with basic format and get a raid controller if that's
what you want.

I think it's starting to soak in.

- I get a RAID card, put it in the server PC, and then
hook each SATA drive up to the RAID card.

- Somewhere in the card's setup, I specify RAID0 or
something and I'm in business - albeit data will
have tb backed up and restored before/after.

- Then, when the mobo takes a dump, I just move the
drives and RAID card to the new PC, install the RAID
drivers, and I'm back in business.

Am I even close?

 

[PeteCresswell]

I second Philo's opinion, dynamic disks just have too many issues, even if
loss of data is no biggy, the headache of regaining the use of the disks adds
to the issue, I'd stay with basic format and get a raid controller if that's
what you want.

FWIW, I wound up installing Windows Home Server.

It's been almost 2 weeks now and my impression is, to quote somebody
else, that "Microsoft hit the ball out of the park on this one.".

So far, I'm a happy camper under WHS - and not much of any anything
makes me happy....