Shad Larsen's Technology Blog

Making your Netbook functional using Windows 7 and Windows Home Server

ShadLar — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 08:28:00 GMT

As a recent purchaser of a netbook I sought out to make it the most functional system possible. Ultimately I wanted to make sure that all of my files I can access from the PC in the Den I can access from my netbook. I have well over 200 gigabytes of music, photos, videos, and other personal files. My netbook, a HP Mini, has only a 60 gigabyte drive. Fortunately there are many options to easily share these files without needing space on your netbook. I took an approach leveraging Windows 7 and Windows Home Server.

First, I have all of my personal files located on my Windows Home Server. Each is well organized into folders for Photos, Music, Video, and personal files. Second, I have installed Windows 7 on my HP Mini. (I’ll post on how to do this in the future.)

Windows 7 has a new capability called Libraries which is a way of easily accessing a collection of folders and files. You have libraries configured for your Document, Music, Pictures, Videos, Downloads, etc. Each of these libraries can be configured to reference any folder located on your local PC or Network. With this capability, I modified each library to reference the corresponding folder on my Windows Home Server. I’ll provide an example using the Music library:

Click Start, right-click on Music, then click Properties
From the Properties window click the Include Folder button, then navigate to the Music folder located on your Windows Home Server.
Click the Include Folder button once you have located the folder.
Click OK to close the Properties windows.

Now you can easily access all of your Music located on your Windows Home Server from your Windows 7 PC. These steps can be duplicated for each of your personal libraries.

Another option that will work if you are running Windows 7 on all PCs across your home network would be to create a Homegroup on your primary PC and then join the netbook to that Homegroup. This will also allow you easy access to your personal files.

I’m quite pleased with the overall results. Windows Home Server, combined with the capabilities of Windows 7 have allowed for easy sharing and easy access to all of my personal files in just a few clicks.

Build a 2-terabyte Windows Home Server for under $500

ShadLar — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:10:00 GMT

I’ve been running my Windows Home Server (WHS) for about 18 months almost flawlessly. My WHS was a old re-purposed system that had sat unused for many months. I installed WHS on it and plugged it in to the home network, and there it sat humming in the closet for the next 18 months. Until last week, when I decided to add more storage and do some routine maintenance. It was the not so routine BIOS update that ruined the long standing stability that I had enjoyed. The short story is that the BIOS updated failed part way through, and my motherboard was old enough it did not have a backup BIOS. My lesson learned? Don’t feel like you need to update your BIOS just because an update is available; after all, the PC had run perfectly for many years without it.

After these events I sought out to replace my hardware with some updated parts, and a smaller form factor. I also wanted to spend less than $500 and repurpose any hardware I could. Here is what I opted for in configuration:

Shuttle K48 Barebones PC - $130
Intel Celeron 430 (1.8 GHz) - $35
Kingston 2GB Value SDRAM DDR2 (PC5300) - $30
2 x Seagate Barracuda 1 TB SATA Hard Drive (32 MB Cache) - $100/each
Windows Home Server License - $100
Repurposed: DVD-ROM (Only needed for WHS install) - $0

Grand Total: $495

Because Windows Home Server has low system requirements I could have opted for less memory and less CPU speed – but it is hard to buy new equipment with specs much lower than this. I could have gone with 1GB of memory and save $12… but with memory as cheap as it is I figured 2GB wouldn’t hurt. Also, remember that with Windows Home Server you only need a DVD-ROM for the installation, after than you really won’t use the drive any longer.

In the end I am very happy with my configuration and the smaller form factor PC for my WHS. It now sits nicely and quietly on my desk.

Any other low-priced configuration? Share them in the comments.

Windows Home Server: My Own Experience

ShadLar — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 11:15:00 GMT

I've had Windows Home Server installed on a PC that sits in a closet within my office for about 3 months now. It sits there quietly with just a network cable and power cable plugged into and hums away unnoticed every day. It has performed the scheduled daily backups for my family desktop PC and the Media Center in the bedroom. I run Vista Ultimate on both PCs, and outside of a few false notifications which required server reboots or a login to the console to figure out - it has been almost perfect.

Last weekend my hard drive on my family PC finally died. I had ignored the loud warning signs for months, and despite warnings, hangs, unresponsiveness, and a few short-lived no boot situations I turned a blind eye to this for months due to my busy schedule. On Saturday the issue could no longer be ignored.

Let me first say that when I setup and configured my Windows Home Server I was quite pleased with the convenience and as a result I did very little to educate myself on how it really worked or what I would have to do if I ever had to rely on it. This was my first mistake.

Learning #1:

When replacing a failed hard disk on your desktop PC ensure the capacity is equal to or greater than that hard disk.

My disk that failed was 500 GB, however I was only using about 180 GB. Typically I would buy a new hard disk online to reap greater savings but given the circumstances I opted to buy a 320 GB drive that was on sale at a local retailer.

After installing the disk I booted from the Home Server Restore CD, encountered problem #2 (see below), and then found out that based on the way Windows Home Server restores your disk I should have purchased the same size disk as I had previously. This is because Home Server performs the backup at the cluster level so upon restoring it restores both "used" and "unused" clusters. This is actually a really good thing and has quite a few benefits - if you care to read about the nitty gritty details check out: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=196fe38c-df20-4e19-92ca-6bda7bec3ecb&DisplayLang=en

Unfortunately as a result of this, I opted to do a clean install of Vista Ultimate on my family PC and then just manually restore my personal files from my Home Server. Sure this meant I would have to reinstall all of my apps, but for whatever reason I find it refreshing to do a fresh start on a system. I am an avid gamer and I often end up with dozens of games installed, of which many have not been played in months.

Learning #2:

When searching for your Home Server from the Restore CD, it may fail if you have named your Home Server something other than SERVER.

When setting up my Home Server originally I named the server based on a common naming schema for my networked PCs. This is perfectly fine, but as a result I had to manually search for my Home Server based on its computer name.

Learning #3:

After performing a nice, new, clean install and configuring your system - defragment your disk, then do a manual PC backup to your Home Server, and lock the backup when it is complete.

Having done a brand spanking new install of Vista I wanted to be able to get back to that pristine state should I ever have a failure again. So I installed my base apps that my family use daily, configured our user accounts, and installed all updates from Windows Update. Note: If you have installed Office remember to opt into Microsoft Update so you get all of the Office Updates as well.

The next thing I did was defragment my hard disk. Because Home Server is backing up at the cluster level I wanted to ensure that the disk was defragmented. This would ensure a nice clean, quick backup, and also avoid a longer backup cycle when the system does do disk defragmentation later in the month on the automatic schedule.

Learning #4:

When manually restoring files from a Home Server backup, you may want to temporarily disable your anti-virus.

After all of this I then began my work of manually restoring my user files from my prior backup (remember that failed disk). This was a fairly easy process as I had previously implemented folder redirection and syncing of offline files for all of my user accounts when I initially setup my Home Server. I'll write in more detail about this on another day and another post.

I found that when my anti-virus was running the manual restore process was brutal. My system was crawling due to the amount of processor cycles the anti-virus was churning. Explorer would be almost completely unresponsive at times. After snoozing the anti-virus monitoring everything throttled up and it was a much smoother process.

Conclusion

With all of that said, I am very pleased with the overall process. Granted I hit a few bumps in the road through this learning journey, there was nothing that was a blocking issue and the end result is what I had hoped for. The great news is that despite a failed disk I was able to replace, setup, and restore in only a few hours time with no data loss and for that I am very happy with my Home Server. The simplicity in setup, the convenience of the backups, and overall self-maintenance outweighs any minor weaknesses in the platform.

Using your Windows Mobile phone with Windows Vista - in my case a Palm Treo 700w

ShadLar — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 07:08:00 GMT

I have a Palm Treo 700w which has been a great phone. It is Play for Sure compliant and I use it as my phone, MP3 player, portable media center, you name it. My typical day to day use is syncing my URGE subscription content to the phone which I typically do via the USB connection. In addition I sync Outlook, OneNote, and my misc. files to my phone using a Bluetooth connection - there is a reason for this that I will cover on another day.

In order to do all of these great things in Windows Vista there are several things you must do first - some of this you can do using standard built in feature of Vista, while others require you to install and configure the Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC).

Using Sync Center

When you plug your phone in it is detected by the OS and by default you will get a Autorun dialogue asking if you want to sync any content to the device with several options. In addition you can use Sync Center directly to establish a sync relationship and sync schdule to keep your music, pictures, videos, and other files up to date. Think of Sync Center as your one-stop-shop for managing all of your sync relationships with various devices, offline files, network folders, etc.

Using Sync Center: http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/f611d649-a80f-4172-bb98-ade6b6cf62801033.mspx
Troubleshooting sync problems: http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/608639ce-27c8-42d5-ad3a-4bc641c9ca711033.mspx

Using Windows Mobile Device Center (the replacement for Active Sync)

Windows Mobile Device Center (pic) works with Sync Center and serves as the replacement for Active Sync on Windows Vista. You use WMDC to install programs, sync with your Outlook or other programs, browse your device, etc. You maintain the same capabilities as Active Sync but have a much nicer looking interface which I think is easier to use - it has great integration with Vista.

Windows Mobile Device Center - Installation & Setup: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/devicecenter.mspx

Syncing with Windows Media Player 11

Most people think of Windows Media Player as the application for playing music and video - but with WMP11 you can also use it to browse your pictures and even view your recorded shows from Media Center.

Now as much as I would like to do so, I am currently unable to sync content using my Bluetooth connection and Windows Media player. My Treo is detected and I can do any number of other tasks via the Bluetooth connection, but I am not able to setup a WMP11 sync relationship just yet... once I get this figured out I will post an update.

Using the USB conection I sync my URGE subscription content to my phone using the Shuffle option which randomly selects from the content I have downloaded and sends it to my Treo. This keeps my content fresh with lots of variety. While I have not used my Treo much with headphones I use it almost every day through the AUX input in my Honda. For road trips this has been awesome as I can get a good mix of music and books on tape stored on the Treo's SD Card.

Setting up Windows Media Player to sync with your device: http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/fc37ace2-5e86-48e2-a844-d2782993204d1033.mspx

I hope you find this info at least somewhat useful - please leave comments on what you would like to see or if there is more detail you would like on any of these areas. Thanks!