Windows Home Server to the Rescue

I have now been running WHS since Dec 2007 on a small self-built VIA based ITX system, chosen because it was small and ran on much lower power and generated less heat and noise than a conventional PC or low cost server allowing me to leave it on all the time. It’s worked like a charm since it was turned on in 2007 and not crashed once! Since then I’ve added a second WHS using the VIA Artigo shoebox PC which I use for projects like the Earthquake monitoring project referred to on this site a few months back.

We have a pretty active PC home. I have gamer kids (I’m one of them) in the house with 3 dedicated gaming PCs mixed in with 3 laptops (2 college, 1 work), a digital audio workstation for audio and midi recording, plus a home built media center PC in the family room. Operating systems are a mix of Windows XP, Vista 32 bit, Vista 64 bit and Windows 7. All of the PCs have the WHS Connector software, though only 2 of them (my home desktop and home laptop) wake up automatically to do backup all the time as I found that the laptop would wake up in my hotel room looking for my WHS when travelling! The rest, I tend to run manual backups or turn on the automated backup only when I know the work laptop is going to be stationary for a while or I have a lot of new content I’m creating.

Having lost data from my pre-WHS writing days, I’d already developed a healthy habit of making sure I had multiple copies of important data (e.g. photos, audio/midi projects) in multiple locations so I’ve managed to avoid catastrophic loss of personal data with a little careful management so far. WHS really helped automate and simplify this previously manual process. On occasion however, there are situations where a recovery of a complete PC or file is still necessary beyond the normal “copy off your backup USB drive” scenario.

(Read the full article on MSWHS.COM here.)