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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There are a few things I am interested in seeing in WHS:
1) Support Raid 5 - I'm hoping that through some kind of advanced configuration, I can setup a Raid 5 array and actually store the majority of my music, movies, pictures, home video, etc in one single location. If ti's possible it would be nice to have some kind of email notification if there's any problems with the array
2) Support for Routing service - a WHS box would be idea for acting as the internet gateway but without some kind support for advanced routing (such as port forwarding) getting the most out of applications like skype will be tough. If the majority of the services are only going to be focused on backup, maybe call it "windows home backup server" which might actually help sell the product
3) Built in Sync functions - windows synctoy is nice but how about having sync, contrib, etc functions running from the WHS. I would like to come home, connect my digital camera, download the pictures and then have them moved automatically to the server so I can view them from any pc or the HTPC in the living room.
If important common files are shared on the server, how are these important files backed up automatically, and where?
I'm seeing alot of great questions that I would like to see answered. Some that I can already answer but one that I am truly interested in finding out:
- Will WHS be able to backup an HDD on an XBOX or XBOX360? Or will I be able to move files and folders (music, media, gamesave data) from these game console hdds onto the WHS?
-If you're going to have a Home Server then it should work with all current Microsoft proprietary devices/softwares that are primarily used in the home.
-There are several retailers that do not allow customers returning their XBOX360s to swap their old hard drive to keep that data. Probably there are plenty of customers also who would not want their data on their old hard drive being given away for potential privacy issues (possible wiping features, maybe even remote defragging features for 360hdd's... I'll stick to the point)
-Also if there are to be any interactivity features to Media Extenders such as the 360, it may be a great time to implement some potentially awesome corss platform LAN party hosting capabilities between PCs and xbox line game consoles...
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