Remove the HDD install size requirement from Home Server?

[STKD]

Trying to find a way to remove the silly, forced 80GB hdd requirement from Home Server so I can try it out without having to waste a perfectly good hard drive by repartitioning it. nLite will remove one limit BUT then installs it purely as 2K3 SBS. vLite won't recognise the files at all (because HS is a silly mixture of .wim and regular 2K3 SBS files)... anyone done this?

[RentedMule]

Why not use vLite on a vista image and diff for the changes made by vLite?

[STKD]

I came back to this silly project today and the thing is, there is nothing on vLite regarding a HDD install size limit in Vista/2K8, so nothing to compare to. Home Server is so strange as a mix of the files that I just can't figure out where to look to solve this one.

The only thing I can see is that if you run nLite, it removes the hdd size requirement limit, but then only installs the OS as 2K3 SBS. If anyone has looked into this please do post up some advice.

[Vista Ultimate R2]

Have you tried setup.exe /nosyscheck? This bypasses all of the hardware checks on Vista/2008 and might work as WHS uses Vista/2008's installer to begin with, before reverting to the 2003 one after the first reboot.

[Rob Jansen]

I don't think that is going to work.

Home Server boots from the DVD and starts the setup right after boot, you can't use any F10 key to bring up the command prompt.

[Kenneth]

I tried using F10 but it only brings up a log window.

[STKD]

Remarkable how such a small thing as removing the HDD size requirement is actually turning out to be so hard.

[happy dude]

Install it in VMWare, create an 80GB HDD image. It'll only use the amount of space on your real HDD that the VMware image uses.

It works

[James]

Happy Dude's way is perfect, but if you want to, go load up a disk splitter (GParted?), and cut 80GB out of the hard disk, and just use it as a secondary partition, no formatting required.

I have a Windows Home Server trial DVD somewhere, I might mess with it sometime. Thanks for reminding me I had those disks.

[happy dude]

If you don't have 80GB free...then VMWare really is your only method,

[TheWahbinator]

Shift-F10 is the key combination you're looking for.

[PortalCake]

Install it in VMWare, create an 80GB HDD image. It'll only use the amount of space on your real HDD that the VMware image uses.

It works

Yeah, I can confirm this, it works. I used it when I ran a pir... legally bought OEM copy of WHS. BTW, when you do this in VMware, use a expanding disk (not doing so makes doing this defeats the purpose).

Is it possible for you to test if you can install on VMware, not activate it yet, then GHOST it, then transfer it to the HDD?

[STKD]

Somehow the idea of using a VM and ghosting/restoring has never really come to me before. Might just have to try it out later with the trial DVD set. I'm still curious about where the actual 80GB check resides in the installer but eh, whatever works will do.

[PortalCake]

I just came up with another idea: Install WHS normally, then shrink the disk, then let's see if it complains about having <80GB

[Rob Jansen]

I just came up with another idea: Install WHS normally, then shrink the disk, then let's see if it complains about having <80GB

You can´t shrink the disk.
Only the partition, the disk is still >80gb.