Power Pack 1 (PP1) Just ROCKS!
Author Charlie Russel over on The unofficial x64 FAQ says that Power Pack 1 (PP1) just ROCKS! Charlie also states that the restore facility just works as it should. Over to him:
I’m completely convinced – this is the single best ordinary user PC backup I’ve ever seen. And I’ve written dozens of chapters on backups in our various books, and used many, many different programs to do backups. None have been as easy, as space efficient, and as painless to restore with. I love it. If you never use WHS for anything else, buy it for the backup alone. But while you’ve got it, take advantage of all the other stuff as well. Make it your TiVo server. Store your family’s files, music and photos on it. Use it to connect to your computers at home when you’re on vacation (it uses the Remote Web Workplace technology from SBS, and we all know how well that works!)
In short? This is a winner.
Read the full article here.
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How can WHS be a winner when in FACT, the “server backup functionality” isn’t including the PC backup database — a separate data store on Home Server that keeps all the data from the PCs that home server is backing up every night!
I’m NOT convinced about anything here for having been advertised since January only to be removed later.
Heck, I don’t even know at this point if PP1 will deliver the goods as promised a second time to just get WHS functioning without it’s inherit defects, missing features and bugs.
Just remember how Microsoft failed the first time around with it’s internal quality bar, to check it’s own product so it functions correctly with it’s own software applications.
What’s to be celebrating about that, unless just for the sake of celebrating without honor, without integrity and without customer satisfaction?
Which hasn’t been the case, despite having a major problem (KB 946676) that has taken forever to fix.
If anything, Microsoft should be the one for apologizing, having taken so long to get around to fixing it’s own product since last year, and while customers (paying your income) have been highly disappointed and unable to actually use their WHS product because of it.
I’m sure Microsoft isn’t reimbursing customers for all the inconvenience, right?
WHS without a doubt has been broken ever since it was publicly released last year. The data corruption issue is just completely inexcusable!
Inexcusable for having passed Microsoft’s own internal quality bars, without even so much as to test it’s own software application with WHS, having known there was some serious flaws since April 2007, when the 100,000 beta testers were sending in reports, having sold WHS anyway to the public when knowing WHS was broken, in which HP complained, having delayed the whole data destructive defect in WHS for the public to be made aware of until at the end of the year, having delayed providing timely relief for way to long of a time, having bundled the upcoming KB 946676 patch with PP1, having delayed again the resolution until yet another month or (more ahead) after having promised many times before this relief, and YES, nobody knows for sure, that WHS will work for sure, as advertised and promised even still…
Maybe we can ask, does anything actually work correctly with Microsoft software? As we “all” know Microsoft software applications and programs are filled with bugs, before release, during testing and after and again with patches, updates and even service packs.
It’s a never ending cycle that customers are experiencing.
Why shouldn’t and why wouldn’t your customers become so disappointed in what Microsoft is pushing out the door?
Especially, when Microsoft treats their customers like criminals, with it’s WGA, DRM, DMI, Activation and Validation schemes!
Customers like myself, want paid solutions to work when we are paying for these solutions to work. It’s that simple.
Anyone wanting or even thinking about using WHS, should learn and discover the many hidden truths about this broken and buggy product that just cannot deliver what was promised and as advertised.
Customers shouldn’t be required to become developers just in enable missing features, and they shouldn’t be required to disconnect their multiple hard drives to avoid data corruption, while being unable to even backup WHS.
Which as the first person had pointed out, that this still remains to be the case!
Nobody in their right thinking would want to buy a backup system, that doesn’t allow for that system to be backed up! With or without data corruption.
And worse, when your own people at Microsoft state, “we do not believe the internal testing and private beta testing we have done is sufficient for us to feel we have “proven” that there are no additional bugs” should be telling everyone not to assume a time of celebration before real actual customers even get to apply the very much needed PP1.
And WHS does cost the highest amount of money!!! Just like Vista too! It’s no wonder why Linux is growing, improving, developing and gaining ground over Microsoft!
Even Microsoft’s search sucks, as evidence of Google’s roaring success! And you can be sure when and if Microsoft was to steal the Yahoo cream, the cash cow isn’t going to produce for Microsoft while under their failing leadership. If only Ballmer would leave sooner rather than later…
WHS without a doubt has been broken ever since it was publicly released last year. The data corruption issue is just completely inexcusable on Microsoft’s behalf!
Inexcusable for having passed Microsoft’s own internal quality bars, without even so much as to test it’s own software application with WHS, having known there was some serious flaws since April 2007, when the 100,000 beta testers were sending in reports, having sold WHS anyway to the public when knowing WHS was broken, in which HP complained, having delayed the whole data destructive defect in WHS for the public to be made aware of until at the end of the year, having delayed providing timely relief for way to long of a time, having bundled the upcoming KB 946676 patch with PP1, having delayed again the resolution until yet another month or (more ahead) after having promised many times before this relief, and YES, nobody knows for sure, that WHS will work for sure, as advertised and promised even still…
Maybe we can ask, does anything actually work correctly with Microsoft software? As we “all” know Microsoft software applications and programs are filled with bugs, before release, during testing and after and again with patches, updates and even service packs.
It’s a never ending cycle that customers are experiencing.
Why shouldn’t and why wouldn’t your customers become so disappointed in what Microsoft is pushing out the door?
Especially, when Microsoft treats their customers like criminals, with it’s WGA, DRM, DMI, Activation and Validation schemes!
Customers like myself, want paid solutions to work when we are paying for these solutions to work. It’s that simple.
Anyone wanting or even thinking about using WHS, should learn and discover the many hidden truths about this broken and buggy product that just cannot deliver what was promised and as advertised.
Customers shouldn’t be required to become developers just in enable missing features, and they shouldn’t be required to disconnect their multiple hard drives to avoid data corruption, while being unable to even backup WHS.
Which as the first person had pointed out, that this still remains to be the case!
Nobody in their right thinking would want to buy a backup system, that doesn’t allow for that system to be backed up! With or without data corruption.
And worse, when your own people at Microsoft state, “we do not believe the internal testing and private beta testing we have done is sufficient for us to feel we have “proven” that there are no additional bugs” should be telling everyone not to assume a time of celebration before real actual customers even get to apply the very much needed PP1.
And WHS does cost the highest amount of money!!! Just like Vista too! It’s no wonder why Linux is growing, improving, developing and gaining ground over Microsoft!
Even Microsoft’s search sucks, as evidence of Google’s roaring success! And you can be sure when and if Microsoft was to steal the Yahoo cream, the cash cow isn’t going to produce for Microsoft while under their failing leadership. If only Ballmer would leave sooner rather than later…
Where do we put questions and bug reports?
Please filter all comments that contain the phrases “internal quality bars,” “proven data corruption flaw,” and “fanboi.”
Has anyone used the server backup proceedure with an eSATA external enclosure?
… HP, the leader in sales for WHS boxes, received “virtually no support calls” on the data corruption bug …
I love WHS, but, to be fair, it’s nearly impossible to get through to HP tech support. In the first days I had WHS, I kept getting the “Sys Drive is Failing” message so called tech support. The home PC division sent me to the server division which said the product was too new to have support. Subsequent calls were no better. HP Support for the MediaSmart is pretty wretched, even if the boxes are decent (I do wish they made upgrading the memory a bit easier–going to two gigs from 512 mb fixed lots of issues for me).
Well, I got excited and installed the PP1 beta, and now I’ve hosed my WHS install. I’m fairly sure my only option is a complete server reinstall, but I thought I’d throw this out in case anyone had another option, or there’s some way I might avoid the same problem in the future.
After installing the update, I rebooted the server. Ran the console from the server via RDP to make sure everything looked good, got to the storage tab, which got hung up showing “Calculating sizes…” so I killed the console, and upgraded the connector software on a few clients while waiting to try again. I ran the console from one of the upgraded clients, and was able to view the storage details, but the console locked up and hung on that tab (couldn’t select any others). The RDP connection for the console then lost connectivity and the server went offline (connector tray icon was gray).
I checked the monitor attached to the WHS box, and saw that there was a blue screen error on it reporting a STOP 50 “page fault in non-paged area” in ntfs.sys, and after the memory dump was complete it rebooted. Brought the console up from a different client after the reboot and while waiting for it to connect to the server, I saw a dialog box on the login screen for the WHS that said something like “Registry hive (file): System was corrupted and has been recovered. Some data might have been lost.” Eventually the console came up, and I looked at event logs and saw nothing useful.
I tried to use the toolkit to send a TALQ submission, and got an error message reading “TALQ threw exception could not find file c:\documents and settings\administrator\local settings\temp\1\cabid.log”. While I was writing down this error, the WHS blue screened AGAIN with a Stop 24 in ntfs.sys (something like address F72625CB base at F725E000), and after another memory dump and reboot, came up to a black screen with “Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \windows\system32\config\system”.
Any options other than a server reinstall?
I’m seeing similar behavior. Never noticed this prior to PP1. However, when I tried to install Power Pack 1 (Beta) it crashed my machine and corrupted the OS!!!
How did this get past the Microsoft high quality standards when this “sort” of glitch happens again and again?
Vista SP1 endless rebooting…
XP SP3 endless rebooting…
What works from Microsoft anyhow? Is everything beta quality only now coming out of their internal quality bars?
Anyone apologizing for Microsoft’s lame quality controls can kiss my _ _ _!
Get it FIXED or lose another customers!
I installed power pack 1 and since then the hard drive has not stopped writing. It goes continuously 24 hours a day.
If I find some more bug ridden behavior like this evaluation time-out, I’ll dump it and go Linux or Mac as I stated before.
I think the WHS concept is a real potential money maker for MS, but not the way they are going about it. I tended to discount the bad press I saw all over the net about WHS, as mine was working great. Now I see what they were posting about.
Check out AMAHI (amahi.org) it is a very good linux alternative to WHS.