By on December 30th, 2007

Data Corruption Update

The Knowledge Base article explaining about the data corruption issue when saving or editing specific programs that are stored on a WHS-based system has been updated to include the following

These issues occur in the following scenario:

  • A home server is under an extreme load. For example, lots of files are being copied to the home server.
  • At the same time, a user is editing files that are already saved in a shared folder on the home server.
  • The program that the user is using to edit these files is one of the programs that are listed in this article.

Although this Knowledge Base article was first authored before the team could consistently repro the issue and provide more specifics, the Windows Home Server team thought it was important to make people aware of it. For now, please follow the advice in this section and do not use the programs that are listed in this article to save or to edit program-specific files that are stored on a Windows Home Server-based system. You can still use the Windows Home Server home computer backup to back up and restore files from and to your home computers.

Todd Headrick, the product planning manager on the Windows Home Server team also had this to say to Computerworld:

“The problem isn’t one hundred percent reproducible, and depends on quite a few different factors. Home Server has to be under an extreme load while doing a large file copy. The flaw comes into play only in instances when the file server’s cache is full and the user is editing a file previously saved to a shared folder.

But we thought it was important enough to generalize [the bug] so people would take it seriously, even though we took a PR [public relations] hit.”

Now I doubt many people running the software have NOT reached that point yet and as we can see the problem depends on quite a few different factors coming into play. All we can do is wait for the fix to become available.

News • Windows Home Server
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By on December 29th, 2007

WHS Hard Drives must be formatted to NTFS the correct way

One of Tranquil PCs customers received an error message when he tried to open a file within a folder in a backup set. As it turns out he had converted his drive to NTFS using Partition Magic 8, which did not convert it properly. So make sure that all drives are converted correctly (if necessary) before connecting them to Windows Home Server.

Read the full story here.

News • Windows Home Server
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By on December 29th, 2007

Add-In: Event Viewer

Benjamin Robichaud has made an add-in that displays the Windows Event Logs, also known as Event Viewer in the Home Server Console. Once installed you can choose which log to monitor, filter the entries with Show All, Warnings, Errors, etc and clear the logs as well.

Event Viewer

Download from the following page.

add-ins • Windows Home Server
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By on December 28th, 2007

WHS File Corruption Issue – More Info

Windows expert Ed Bott has been in contact with the Windows Home Server team, who have given more information on the file corruption issue that affects the following programs when using them to save files to your home servers:

  • Windows Vista Photo Gallery
  • Windows Live Photo Gallery
  • Microsoft Office OneNote 2007
  • Microsoft Office OneNote 2003
  • Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
  • Microsoft Money 2007
  • SyncToy 2.0 Beta

Additionally, there have been customer reports of issues with Torrent applications, with Intuit Quicken, and with QuickBooks program files.

This is what the team said:

“This issue does not affect every Windows Home Server installation, and the symptoms require several factors that are not mentioned in the KB article. The largest contributing factor is when a home server is under extreme load. If you’re doing a large, highly demanding file copy operation in the background and you’re using one of the listed applications to edit a file that’s stored on a shared folder on the home server, and you save the edited file to the server, then you might see this bug.”

The team then added that: 

“Meanwhile, backups stored on a Windows Home Server are completely safe, as are files copied to the server for safekeeping or streaming. This issue affects only files that are saved directly from one of the listed applications to a shared folder on a Windows Home Server.”

More info available from Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report.

News • Windows Home Server
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By on December 28th, 2007

Another Way to Restore Files in WHS – Shadow Copy

As well as WHS having a back-up engine built in, it also has a lessor known feature to also help you protect your data, Volume Shadow Copy. Shadow Copy (also called VSC, Volume Snapshot Service or VSS) automatically creates point-in-time copies of files as you work, so you can quickly and easily retrieve versions of a file you may have accidentally deleted. Shadow copy creates copies on a scheduled basis of files that have changed. Since only incremental changes are saved, minimal disk space is used for shadow copies.

It works on single files as well as whole folders. When restoring a file, all previous versions that are different from the live copy on the disk are shown. When accessing a previous version of a folder, users can browse the folder hierarchy as it was in a previous point in time. 

The VSS service takes a snapshot every 12 hours at noon and mid-night for all network shares. It’s normal for it to be set to disabled, but it does get run. The number of copies that will be kept is dependent on how much free space you have free, how many files have changed, and how big those files are. Lots of changes, or changes to big files, or little free space, all mean that few copies are kept. 

If you have a client operating system that supports VSC (Windows Server 2003, and all releases of Microsoft Windows thereafter) you can browse and restore the old versions using the normal interface:

Previous Versions

In your client, right click on the connector in your task, shared folders, then chose a folder, right click on it, properties, then “Previous Versions” tab.

Tutorial • Windows Home Server
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By on December 28th, 2007

Welcome Back

Welcome back and I hope that all have all had a wonderful Christmas. Hopefully if you have been good girls and boys then Santa would have bought you a HP or Tranqual Home Server or some other wonderful gadget. If not don’t worry sit back, relax and enjoy some of the great stuff we have coming up here at mswhs.com!

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By on December 24th, 2007

It's the Season for a Home Server

From all the team here at mswhs.com we’d like to wish you a very Merry Christmas!

Merry-Christmas

With special thanks to you our readers, the Windows Home Server team, and our contributors who have helped this site to flourish since we started back in June 2007.

Whilst I nibble on some mince pies and put on even more weight over the next couple of days I hope Santa brings you what you want – Home Server’s anyone?

News • Windows Home Server
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By on December 24th, 2007

What the web is saying

Mary Jo Foley writes on her blog “All about Microsoft” that a Linux guy by the name of Jason Perlow gave Windows Home Server a thumbs up

Read the post and the debate which follows.

Next Windows expert Ed Bott explains on his blog that to buy the OEM copy of WHS does NOT require you to buy a piece of hardware with it. Ed states:

“Microsoft changed the rules for its System Builder OEM program in 2005, eliminating the requirement to purchase a piece of hardware and specifically allowing end users who are building or refurbishing a PC to purchase a single copy of an OEM license.

And yes, you can legally purchase an OEM copy if you intend to build a single PC or server (including Windows Home Server), for yourself or for someone else.”

Read the rest of the details on Ed Bott’s Windows Expertise site.

News • Windows Home Server
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By on December 23rd, 2007

Add-In: Windows Home Server Power Saving

Blogger Albert Griscti-Soler was after a way to to put his Windows Home server into standby or hybernation from 2am to 5pm (weekends excluded) to save 60% of his electricity bill but could not find an easy way to do it….until now!

Power Saving 
Albert has written an add-in that enables the task to be completed easily. Once installed the Power Saving tab can be accessed via the settings menu within the console. Here you have the choice to use standby, hibernation (if you’ve enabled it on your system) or to disable the power savings; additionally you can specify the ‘bed-time’ schedule, the time when Home Server will be “sleeping”. The first time you enable ‘Power Saving’, you will need to provide authorization (i.e. username and password) since the Task Manager requires a valid account in order to run the scheduled tasks.

More info and the download are available from runtime360.com.

add-ins • Windows Home Server
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By on December 23rd, 2007

Power Management Add-In for Scaleo Home Server

The German Home Server Blog and We Got Served have details on a power management add-in for the Scaleo Home Server which is due to be released in Europe in January (2008).

Scaleo Home Server PM1
The system system continually runs in Hibernation mode and only wakes up when you need to connect to it. The Power Management add-in can be configured to put the machine in to hibernation or to wake up the machine at scheduled times. The system will automatically wake itself up for essential scheduled tasks like nightly backups. Doing so will keep power consumption at a minimum and Fujitsu-Siemens are seeing this add-in as a selling point for the Scaleo Home Server, so it is doubtful for the add-in will be available else where.

Scaleo Home Server PM2

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