No it’s not a toaster (although it is). It’s a 55w Windows Home Server. Edgar Voorbraak built this with a 1.5GHz Via C7 CPU with 1GB of RAM and Edgar has even managed to cram in 4 hard drives.
What is great is that the toast time knob controls the fan speed and the emergency stop button is used as power button.
What can I say? Amazing! Check out the full article at Home Server Hacks.
The Ramblings of a Home Server User blog has just uploaded a new version of the SharePoint how-to guide for those who would like to test it out. Tom would also like the guide to be edited and updated if necessary.
The guide and scripts are available from here.
Diskeeper 2008 Home Server Edition is the defragmentation tool made specially for our Windows Home Server’s. Site TechRepublic have a how to install it tutorial for those of you who are not sure how to go about it.
Read it here.
The add-in AutoExit 2008 for Windows Home Server version 2008 is now available for download.
The add-in enables you to shut down and reboot machines in your home network from within the console. Wake On Lan is also supported which enables you to easily boot up your machines remotely. All these actions are available per machine or for all machines.
Download from here.
How would you like to synchronize files that are not located on your network with your Windows Home Server?
In my case I use the online FolderShare service to “backup” my brothers photos and documents from his PC back to my WHS
With the Foldershare software running on both the home server and on his client machine, the folders are kept in sync. And although my brothers computer is a PC, it could had also been a MAC, because the FolderShare software is available for that to, allowing an easy way of syncing the Mac to Home Server.
Privacy is not an issue with Microsoft’s FolderShare service, since none of the files are hosted. It’s just like sending a file to someone over Windows Live Messenger, except it is done automatically. Any file type can be transferred and the web management screen works in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera.
Since the FolderShare software will only work when a user is logged in, we will have to turn it into a Service. This is easy enough to do but be sure that you have already downloaded and configured FolderShare and that data is being synchronized before proceeding and be sure to shutdown FolderShare before performing these steps. Courtesy of Chris Blankenship’s Ramblings:
- You will need instsrv.exe and srvany.exe from the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools.
- Copy instsrv.exe to c:\program files\foldershare
- Copy srvany.exe to c:\program files\foldershare
- execute “c:\program files\foldershare\instsrv.exe” FolderShare “c:\program files\foldershare\srvany.exe”
- execute c:\reg ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\FolderShare\Parameters /v Application /d “c:\program files\foldershare\foldershare.exe”
- execute c:\reg ADD HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\FolderShare\Parameters /v AppDirectory /d “c:\program files\foldershare”
- execute c:\reg DELETE HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /v Foldershare /f
- execute c:\net start Foldershare
More Information: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/137890
A couple of things worth mentioning. First, you can’t run a Windows Service with Interactive Desktop support if you want that service to access the Internet; Windows won’t let this happen. So this means you should never click the service properties checkbox to make Foldershare interactive with the desktop. Second, because you are running Foldershare as a service you will receive an error during your login indicating that Foldershare is already running. Ignore this error and things will continue to work great. If you try and remove the registry entry that causes Foldershare to launch during your login process the service will re-add the entry the next time it restarts, so don’t even bother removing the registry. I have tested this with Windows Server 2003 and Windows Home Server without any trouble.
As you can see Foldershare is a great tool and is handy for syncing small amounts of data. It allows syncing of up to 10,000 files, which is around 40 GB of mp3 files.
I wanted to bring to your attention, a tutorial that was written by runtime360 back in February on how to create a custom image of Windows Home Server using the supplied OPK disc. Doing so enables you to add additional drivers to your install DVD as well as adding your own customizations. Anyway here’s the post:
I don’t know that this information is useful to your average Windows Home Server end-user, but if you’re building a system yourself you could consider going down the OPK route to save yourself some bother in the future should you ever need to restore the system partition image.
Fixing Database Inconsistency errors is a great post by brubber in the Windows Home Server Forums. In his guide brubber explains how to recover from database inconsistency errors as well as how to fix the client backup database as well as how to fix the backup service not running.
Read it here.
Matthew Miller has written about running Windows Home Server as a Subversion Server which is an open-source version control developer tool which can run under Linux or Windows.
So, if your into really techie stuff (not for the faint hearted), then head over to the details here.
A great resource for those of you thinking of developing an add-in for Windows Home Server is available on MSDN, Microsoft’s developer network, which is available here.
The T7-HSAi and T2-WHS-A3i are the two new models in Tranquil PC’s Home Server lineup. Both are powered by the multi-thread, low energy 45nM 1.6GHz ATOM 230 CPU from Intel.
Both models have the same ‘fan less’ design features of the previous units, providing near silent operation and enhanced reliability, with power consumption from only 29W.
The T7-HSAi also supports 2x internal HDDs (2.5”), providing data duplication on the 250GB and 320GB models
Both are available for pre order with the T2-WHS-A3i starting at £278 + VAT shipping from the first week of June and the T7-HSAi starting at £299 shipping the following week.
A comparison between both units is available from here as well as ordering details on the T7-HSAi and the T2-WHS-A3i.
