Thought I would just share this with people incase they are curious, as I was.
I have a Windows Home Server at home that happily runs my backups and torrents and other stuff, and I though the other day, while I may have these backups, I have no idea how to restore from them. Sop as a test, I stuck my ubuntu live CD into my laptop and prompty deleted all my partitions
So, I downloaded and ran the WHS restore CD installer, which gave me an ISO to burn. Burnt that with Windows 7 and stuck it in the laptop.
It boots into its own little management version of Windows. First you have to choose your language and things, and then you are shown your network devices and hard drives, and asked if you would like to install other drivers to pick up others. It picked all my laptop ones up so all was well. Then you just click continue and it hurrys off to find your server. It failed to find my server using the Wifi, but thats no big deal as restoring over wifi isnt recomended anyway, so I stuck a cable in to my router. It found the server and connected with the password fine. Then, as the disk wasnt formated, it gave me Windows Disk Manager to sort out some sort of partition on my disk. I stuck a 20GB partition at the begining of my laptop HDD and chose to resotre the C: drive from my laptop backup to it. Click go, sit and watch some TV, 10 minutes later it says its done...
Restart the machine, it boots straite into Windows 7 Beta that was on there as if nothing had happened. I then opened up the connector and opened the D: drive backup I had and copied the files onto the second half of my drive.
I wanted to test this to ensure I knew how things would work shoud a HDD fail in any of my machines. As it turns out its incredibly simple and fast. Upgrading a HDD in future will be a doddle, as will recovering should a HDD fail. It is by far the best image restore application ive seen or used.
That is all. Just wanted to detail what I did incase anyone else in in the same boat as me (i.e. loads of backups on WHS, but no idea how to restore from them)
I have a Windows Home Server at home that happily runs my backups and torrents and other stuff, and I though the other day, while I may have these backups, I have no idea how to restore from them. Sop as a test, I stuck my ubuntu live CD into my laptop and prompty deleted all my partitions
So, I downloaded and ran the WHS restore CD installer, which gave me an ISO to burn. Burnt that with Windows 7 and stuck it in the laptop.
It boots into its own little management version of Windows. First you have to choose your language and things, and then you are shown your network devices and hard drives, and asked if you would like to install other drivers to pick up others. It picked all my laptop ones up so all was well. Then you just click continue and it hurrys off to find your server. It failed to find my server using the Wifi, but thats no big deal as restoring over wifi isnt recomended anyway, so I stuck a cable in to my router. It found the server and connected with the password fine. Then, as the disk wasnt formated, it gave me Windows Disk Manager to sort out some sort of partition on my disk. I stuck a 20GB partition at the begining of my laptop HDD and chose to resotre the C: drive from my laptop backup to it. Click go, sit and watch some TV, 10 minutes later it says its done...
Restart the machine, it boots straite into Windows 7 Beta that was on there as if nothing had happened. I then opened up the connector and opened the D: drive backup I had and copied the files onto the second half of my drive.
I wanted to test this to ensure I knew how things would work shoud a HDD fail in any of my machines. As it turns out its incredibly simple and fast. Upgrading a HDD in future will be a doddle, as will recovering should a HDD fail. It is by far the best image restore application ive seen or used.
That is all. Just wanted to detail what I did incase anyone else in in the same boat as me (i.e. loads of backups on WHS, but no idea how to restore from them)