A guide to Windows Home Server Massachusetts

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Backing up and restoring

At the top of the feature heap, Windows Home Server backs up all the data on all your computers. Automatically. No setup wizards, other than a very simple hook-up program. No weird jargon.

Here’s what you can expect if you use WHS as your backup central:

If you need to retrieve an old copy of a file, WHS makes it easy.

WHS Backup lets you restore an entire hard drive. This ain’t your father’s backup program: if one of the PCs on your network suddenly loses its C: drive — or you get clobbered by a virus, or a rogue Windows automatic update freezes your Windows XP machine tighter than a penguin’s tail feathers — WHS’s computer restore feature lets you bring back an earlier version of the entire hard drive with very little fuss.

If you shell out the shekels and put two or more hard drives in your WHS computer, Windows Home Server mirrors backup data: Separate, individually recoverable copies of the backup reside on more than one hard drive. That way, if one of the WHS computer’s hard drives fail, you can resurrect everything. Try doing that with your one-button-backup hard drive.

The backup program itself packs lots of smarts. For example, if you have the same file on two different drives, or even on two different computers, WHS only maintains one backup. In fact, if pieces of files are duplicated across multiple machines, only one copy of each piece — each Lego block, if you will — gets stored. WHS maintains a table that keeps track of which piece goes where on what machine. Very slick.

Sharing folders

Any server worth its salt lets you store folders on the server and get at those folders from other computers on the network. That’s the premise behind shared folders.

If you’ve struggled with shared folders in Windows XP or Vista (or even Windows 98 or Windows for Workgroups 3.11, for that matter), you have no doubt become conversant with \\really\convoluted\folder\names. Heaven help you if you want to look at the photos of your summer vacation three years ago, and can’t remember if they’re sitting on the TV room computer’s D: drive, or the bedroom’s C:\Documents and Settings\Bill\ Desktop\Vacation Pics folder.

Windows Home Server creates a small set of pre-defined folders for you, and you can readily add more. People using your network can easily find the folders — and (if you give them permission) stick stuff in the folders and take stuff out. The great saving grace about WHS shared folders: they sport simple names like, oh, Photos or Music. None of this \\computername\drive\folder\subfolder garbage.

As the Reverend C.A. Goodrich famously wrote in 1827, There is as much meaning in the old adage, and the observance of which let me urge you as a remedy for every degree of evil I advert to — “Have a place for every thing, and keep every thing in its proper place.” Maintaining one shared location for everything, and keeping everything in its place, can simplify your life tremendously, whether you advert to degrees of evil or not. (Could somebody please tell me how to advert to a degree? Sounds like fun.)

When your Great Aunt Martha wants to look at your family photos, she can sit down at any computer on the network, and she can see this folder called Photos. Mirabile dictu, that’s where the photos reside. Auntie Martha doesn’t have to know the name of the computer that contains the photos, the drive they’re on, or any other computer arcana. They’re just there.

As you get more adept at using WHS, you’ll discover that you can create new shared folders, grant access permissions, and the like. But straight out of the box, the folders suddenly appear out of thin air — and they make sense.

Managing disks

Windows Home Server takes care of disk management behind the scenes so you don’t have to.

You’ll never know, or care, which drive on the WHS computer holds what folders, or which files.

If you have more than one hard drive on your WHS computer, backups get mirrored automatically. Computer geeks tend to think of that as a RAID feature — Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks — but WHS doesn’t use RAID technology. RAID’s too complicated for most home users to maintain, and it’s married to specific kinds of hardware.

The Windows Home Server approach to highly reliable data storage works with plain, everyday hard drives, and the kinds of hard drive controllers you find on any PC these days. It’s all done with smoke and mirrors — and some smokin’ good programming. No fancy hardware. Nothing to break down. The following list takes a closer look at what you don’t have to worry about:

In the WHS world, disk drive volumes and folders get extended as needed and you don’t have to fuss with the details.

Individual folders can and do reside on two or more disks. You needn’t deal with any of it.

When the WHS machine starts running out of disk space, it tells you. Install another drive and the drive is absorbed into the collective, Borg-style: more space becomes available, and you don’t need to care about any of the details.

Okay, you do have to do one thing: When you run out of space, you have to add more. But disks are cheap and easy to install.

Accessing your network from far afield

If you so desire, Windows Home server can open up your entire home or small office network so you can log on to any computer on your network from any browser, anywhere in the world.

That sounds scary, but (at least at this point) the security looks mighty good. WHS’s Remote Access feature takes a little while to set up, but once it’s in place, you can

Log on to your server.

Upload or download files from a specific folder.

Use any pre-ordained PC on your network as if you were sitting right in front of it. (Give or take a little time for a slow connection, anyway.)

Let other people log on to your home network and retrieve files in specially designated folders. (If you’re clever and set restrictions properly, that is.)

Geeks might be reminded of something called an FTP server, which performs a similar function, allowing people to get into a folder from the Internet and send files to the folder or retrieve files from it. Part of Remote Access acts like FTP, but it employs an entirely different technology: Windows Home Server doesn’t use FTP.

Having your own Internet-accessible repository can be really handy, and keep casual surfers from leafing through your private pics. Instead of posting pics of your new toddler, uh, toddling, on photo-sharing sites such as Flickr or dotPhoto or Webshots, you simply stick the pics in a shared folder on your own Windows Home Server and give all your family and friends the Web address and password that’ll let ’em in.

Keeping the home fires burning

Windows Home Server constantly monitors all the computers on your network and gives you a concise centralized “health report”.

Windows Vista computers on your home or small office network keep WHS abreast of the current status of patches and virus signature file updates. Vista computers also notify the WHS server if they’re running out of disk space. Windows XP and Vista machines both keep WHS apprised of their backup status.

Streaming media

Windows Home Server doesn’t provide the media streaming capabilities that you find in Windows Media Center Edition, or Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate. However, if you treat your server nicely and discover how to say “please” (see Part III), it will hold your media collection, and feed the collection to a Media Center or Home Premium PC. If you have an Xbox 360, you can connect it to your Media Center or Vista Home Premium (or Ultimate) PC, and that PC, in turn, can pull the media off the server.

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For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.