Actually most likely the cheapest and easyest solution would be to dump WHS and replace it with a linux server.
If I do that, I lose the data from 3 computers that no longer exist. Their data is backed up only on this WHS server, and the hardware is in the trash.
I did connect my new 2TB drive to the WHS server via a USB to SATA adaptor, and the transfer speeds were underwhelming. I mentioned in my original post that the transfer rate would result in the database being copied in approximately 1 month, using a USB drive.
I'm going to let the transfer chug along another few days since it's about halfway through now. After that, I'll try going into the BIOS and trying to disable everything, and then go into windows device manager and disable more stuff in there. Maybe I can free up some PCI bandwidth and that will help. I will also try uninstalling and re-installing the NIC drivers...
As for a Linux server being easier... Really? I've been using Linux since 1992, and that is simply not a reasonable expectation, to be easier than the original WHS. This WHS has been simplicity itself. It even adds new drives to the storage volume automatically (well, you do have to concur with its recommendation but that is a single button push). Client setup is literally seamless even with windows 7 clients, and instead of relying on compression to keep storage usage down, it de-duplicates at the cluster level. Right now I have about 1.2 TB of data stored in 670GB of space, because duplicated clusters are not stored twice. It is amazingly efficient and simple. Unfortunately, the hardware I'm using is old enough that I have some serious hardware limitations so I need to upgrade the hardware. I tried the next version of windows home server and couldn't even figure out how to add a second HD to the storage volume, even though the drive was installed when the OS was first installed, so that was a worthless experiment.
I've tried multiple Linux based backup servers before, and none of them are as simple and seamless as the original WHS.
Auger, yes I meant TB not GB both times. The data won't be there still because the computers used to make about half of the backup database do not exist anymore. Rather than manually copying off the data which would involve expanding over 1TB of data from a 670GB database (compression and cluster-level de-duplication at work), it is better to copy the entire storage database and after re-installing WHS on the new computer, dumping the storage database back into the data volume. That's how Microsoft recommends migrating the WHS data, and it makes a lot of sense because it also maintains file version histories over time, so I can get various versions of the files from different points in time, if I maintain the database integrity. And that means manually copying the entire database (259 files, 670GB in my situation) and dumping it into the new server's data folder after the fresh OS install.
Icepac, I'll try grabbing the IRQ list after the file transfer finishes in a few days. The drives are in DMA mode, and that was the first thing I checked. Can't really check the drives attached to the SATA card but they check out ok using the SATA card's management utility.
The computers are both directly connected to a gigabit switch that has 5 computers hanging off of it. The switch functions normally with all other computers, and I have had the same slow performance using 3 different gigabit switches over the last couple of years. I've also used different network cables, so I've pretty much troubleshot the network hardware including cables and the gigabit switch. I have tried jumbo frames both on and off, with no change in performance.
I don't know if the old mobo even does ACPI... It's about 10 yrs old.
