Windows Home Server will automatically back up your home computers to your home server and allow you to easily restore the entire computer or an individual file or folder to a previous point in time. The Windows Home Server Backup solution uses an innovative system to back up only the data that has not already been backed up before. Even if you have several copies of the same data on different computers, the data is backed up only once on your home server and your home server keeps track of what data was stored on each home computer on each day. This makes it very efficient in terms of the time it takes for backups to complete and also the amount of space that is used on your home server.
Computer backups are automatically configured when you install the Windows Home Server Connector software on your computers. Backup is performed automatically on a daily basis for every configured computer. Normally there is no need to change any settings. If you want to change settings for a home computer you do it through the Windows Home Server Console application by Configuring the Backup of a computer to exclude certain hard drives or folders on a given hard drive (e.g. Recorded TV folder on a Vista Home Premium computer).
Restoring a home computer to a previous point in time is easy. If you want to restore your computer to a previous point in time, you would boot the home computer from the Home Computer Restore CD. The computer will connect to your home server and provide a simple wizard for restoring a single hard drive or multiple hard drives from a backup of that computer that is stored on your home server.
You can also restore individual files or folders by selecting a home computer and a specific backup of that computer from the Windows Home Server Console application. A Windows Explorer window will be displayed with all of the files and folders that were backed up for that computer on that day. You can easily drag and drop individual files or entire folders from this Windows Explorer window and store them on your Windows Desktop or any other location on your home computer.
I have been running Windows Home Server in my house for some time now. The sum total of all of the used disk space in my house is close to 400 GB across my 3 PCs. And, I have multiple backups for these 3 PCs so that I can restore any PC to yesterday, last week, last month or the day of the first backup created by Windows Home Server. The sum total of disk space used for all of these backups on my home server is 186 GB, as there is a lot of similar stuff across these 3 PCs. Magic? or just some great software solving the home computer backup problem one household at a time.
The Windows Home Server initiates the backups of your home computers every night, by default it starts backing up your PCs shortly after midnight (this time is configuable). If one of your PCs in plugged in but in sleep mode, the home server will 'wake it up', back it up, and then let it go back to sleep. If it is only on battery power, we will choose to not backup that PC. We don't plan on trying to wake up machines that are powered off, while it is possible in some cases, it is not 100% reliable and it will be hard for consumers to figure out how to configure their PC for these capabilities.
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When we started formulating ideas for solving the problems for households with multiple PCs and a broadband connection, we focused on the development of solutions that solved problems one household at a time, instead of a single PC at a time. And based on the customer research, multiple usability tests, and some "gut feel" decisions, we opted to deliver the following high-level features and functionality in the first version of Windows Home Server:
· Automated Computer Backup with Simple Restore for your Home Computers
Windows Home Server helps provide you with peace of mind by automatically backing up all of your home computers and your important files; making it easy to restore an entire home computer or just a file from a previous point in time.
· Access Everything from Anywhere
Your home server enables you to easily and more securely access your files and personal computers from inside and outside of your home. You can use your home server to store all of your important files in a central location, for access anytime and anywhere.
· Solution that Grows with You
Windows Home Server grows with you and meets your needs, today and into the future. It is incredibly easy to add hard drives as you need more space for your documents, photos, music and videos.
I realize that this is a high-level overview and you want more details about all of the nitty gritty cool features under each of these broad categories, and all that will be coming in the subsequent days.
I do want to add that we have tried to minimize the number of "knobs and buttons" that people need to use to configure their home server to get things working. For example, after you connect your home server hardware, that is powered by the Windows Home Server software, into your broadband router/firewall with an ethernet cable (and plug the power cord into the wall) then you just need to load the Windows Home Server Connector software on each of your home computers running the Windows XP or Windows Vista operating systems.
After the Windows Home Server Connector software is installed, a full image-based backup of each home computer is initiated every single night by the Windows Home Server software. From these backups stored on the home server, you can do a complete restore of the entire PC or open up one of these backups to restore individual files and folders. By default, we make the assumption that people want to backup all of the PCs in their house so they can do a complete image-based restore if necessary, and we have some great technology for consuming very little disk space on your home server for all of these backups. More on that tomorrow ...
Mary Jo Foley, queen of the Microsoft watchers, posted two stories on ZDNET today about the development history of Home Server, based on a conversation she had with Charlie Kindel. Charlie is the general manager overseeing Home Server and has been a guiding light for the product inside the company.
As Mary Jo recounts, he had been researching and making the case for a home server product all the way back to 1999, anticipating the widespread need we see now for simple backup/restore, storage that grows with your needs and access to your digital "stuff" from anywhere. His journey went through four general phases...hence the project name "Quattro" (Italian for 4) and eventual codename "Q."
J