MS Windows Home Server

(1) Just replaced an external 1 TB drive on my server with an external 2 GB drive (using the old 1 TB drive for backup at another machine); now I have 2 1 TB drives inside and a 2 TB drive outside (eSata connection). If I have more than 2 TB of data, and the external 2 TB drive "poops out," am I in trouble?
(2) I have 1 GB of RAM - and all is running fine. Is there any benefit at all of adding another GB of Ram?
(3) A friend has a new laptop with a solid state drive. That thing is fast. Anyone try using one of those with WHS? Or any faster drive (10,000 RPM drive, for example)? Would that drive be best placed as the system drive, and if so - how does one make the change? Or is that just a waste of money...?

I suppose the phrase "if it ain't broke don't fix it" may apply here, but....

Anyone have any thoughts on these things? Posted last year, and not a single reply! Are the questions too stupid?

1) That's a how long is a piece of string question It depends on a number of factors including whether you have folder duplication turned on, and how much data is duplicated between all your backed up machines amongst many other things, (don't forget WHS looks for data duplication at cluster level, so as not to waste space). There is no real clear answer but I would say that there is a good chance that you need to get some more storage onto your PC just too be sure, perhaps one of the 1.5 Tb drives that seem to be dropping in price by the minute.

2) Up until recently I had my WHS running with 512 Kb of RAM, and have now moved up to 4Gb with an enforced motherboard change, (WHS probably only "sees" about 3.5Gb being a 32 bit OS, but I'm hoping the next incarnation of WHS is 64 bit). Response times for my Squeezebox server and the home server console screen are much more snappy than before. Most OEM WHS machines are now supplied with at least 2Gb of RAM, but I would reckon you are probably ok with your existing 1 Gb - put the cash towards a larger hard disc!

3) Moving to an SSD or faster drive is just a waste of money - yes there will be a performance difference, but nothing you would notice in real terms. This is mainly because all data in your backups or file storage has to move across the network, and even with a gigabit LAN the movement of the data is likely to be much slower than a hard disk write speed. Although it must be said I am no expert in this area!!

Gary