Windows Home Server

Is the DE addon actually going to keep the same functionality, and how mcuh is it likely to cost? I wwould upgrade mine, but without DE its pointless. I have no wish to arse about with RAID and anything else.
 
DE is the only reason I went for WHS over just throwing a copy of XP etc on there. I want the ability to add drives as/when I want, without any messing of having to move files etc.

Yes, the automated backups have been useful, but I could have quite easily found another bit of software to do that.
 
WHS dropped the ball by not having DE. WHSv1 has just been so easy for me to add disks, duplicate folders, recover failed drives etc.

Without these the home user now needs to think about seperate backup solutions and be more thoughtful about where they put their data.
 
wonder_lander said:
WHS dropped the ball by not having DE. WHSv1 has just been so easy for me to add disks, duplicate folders, recover failed drives etc.

Without these the home user now needs to think about seperate backup solutions and be more thoughtful about where they put their data.
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Agreed, it makes it pointless tbh. XP can do everything that WHS 2011 does (out of the box anyway!).
 
PhillyDee said:
Agreed, it makes it pointless tbh. XP can do everything that WHS 2011 does (out of the box anyway!).
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That's polearcks..... :rolleyes:

So XP can backup your entire home network out of the box?? So XP can provide a remote access solution so you can access all your media and stream it over the web out of the box???

My rrrrrrrr' s

:rolleyes:
 
tbz_ck said:
That's polearcks..... :rolleyes:

So XP can backup your entire home network out of the box?? So XP can provide a remote access solution so you can access all your media and stream it over the web out of the box???

My rrrrrrrr' s

:rolleyes:
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Yes, it has RDP already. Missed the backup part to be fair, but free software would quickly cure that one.

So

:rolleyes: back to you.

Seriously, there is no point in WHS 2011 without DE. Becasue instead of Windows HOME server where you make it easy for HOME users (don't forget the target audience here!) you are starting to have to mess with RAID to get your disc redundancy. Certainly not for home users. If they had released these in a different order, with 2011 coming first without DE, it would be a complete non-issue.
 
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PhillyDee said:
Yes, it has RDP already. Missed the backup part to be fair, but free software would quickly cure that one.

So

:rolleyes: back to you.

Seriously, there is no point in WHS 2011 without DE. Becasue instead of Windows HOME server where you make it easy for HOME users (don't forget the target audience here!) you are starting to have to mess with RAID to get your disc redundancy. Certainly not for home users. If they had released these in a different order, with 2011 coming first without DE, it would be a complete non-issue.
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That the thing though, you don't NEED disk redundancy when you can backup your backups to another drive and the OS partition to another drive.

3 drives in the microserver, 1 x 250GB OS. 2 x 2TB. One has all the client backups and shared folders. The other is the destination drive for the server backup which backs up the OS and the shared folders and client backups.

Strictly speaking you have redundancy without RAID, because your data is in more than one place.

Then you can add to that cloud storage and you have a bang up backup solution

Also, I'd really like to know what free software can schedule all of your backups on a home network by waking up and putting to sleep machines in the middle of the night. This is a serious question as I'd like to know what can do it apart from WHS.

Oh and XP PRO has RDP. Not home edition which a lot of XP installations are.
 
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I've had a foul 12hrs trying to get WHS2011 to install, its been nothing but a right royal PITA and having had a nicely working WHS v1, it seems that my W7 system cannot connect to the server at the very last stage of the connection process. It gets about 20px from the end, then starts reeling itself back in before telling me sod all about whats wrong with it! It does connect to a knackered laptop instantly, so its not the WHS install. I found that out after 3 installs, and a VM, and this machine flatly refuses at that final step. The logs suggest its a TCP error and the connection is refused on port 6602. i've enabled it on windows firewall, but its made no difference, i was pretty sure it wouldnt cos its never batted an eyelid at anything in the past.
I doubt theres anything anyone can suggest for that (and im too impatient to wait it out for an answer, and doubt anyone would want to rummage through all the jibberish log files which would be required if the above didnt ring bells) but i dunno, maybe someones had it and will know a solution before i hit format.

So it looks like i'd have to reinstall W7 and hope something sorts itself out. I've even deleted my WHS backups due to the fact that i expected to just recreate them once 2011 was in place, so the prospect of formatting C: knowing anything i might miss is long gone, isnt an attractive proposition.


1 thing i've noticed, and im not at all impressed with and hope someone can clarify it for me...
On my PC i dont bother with a login password, and since installing WHS2011 when W7 loads up it asks me for a username and password. Surely this isnt what i'll be forced into doing now??
I dont need login accounts lets alone passworded security for it, is there any way to tell it to GTFO my machine and bother someone else??
Its done the same on the laptop, and its completely unnecessary.
I wouldnt mind if it was because you'd gain direct access to the server, but you still need to enter passwords anyway. Can someone please tell me whether this can be fixed, because i've already had it upto the eyeballs with WHS2011 for today, and having spent money i really could do without spending to go from v1 to v2 (and im yet to buy a license, thankfully!), its turning into a real PITA and i've barely stopped since 2:30pm yesterday
 
PaulC2K said:
I've had a foul 12hrs trying to get WHS2011 to install, its been nothing but a right royal PITA and having had a nicely working WHS v1, it seems that my W7 system cannot connect to the server at the very last stage of the connection process. It gets about 20px from the end, then starts reeling itself back in before telling me sod all about whats wrong with it! It does connect to a knackered laptop instantly, so its not the WHS install. I found that out after 3 installs, and a VM, and this machine flatly refuses at that final step. The logs suggest its a TCP error and the connection is refused on port 6602. i've enabled it on windows firewall, but its made no difference, i was pretty sure it wouldnt cos its never batted an eyelid at anything in the past.
I doubt theres anything anyone can suggest for that (and im too impatient to wait it out for an answer, and doubt anyone would want to rummage through all the jibberish log files which would be required if the above didnt ring bells) but i dunno, maybe someones had it and will know a solution before i hit format.

So it looks like i'd have to reinstall W7 and hope something sorts itself out. I've even deleted my WHS backups due to the fact that i expected to just recreate them once 2011 was in place, so the prospect of formatting C: knowing anything i might miss is long gone, isnt an attractive proposition.


1 thing i've noticed, and im not at all impressed with and hope someone can clarify it for me...
On my PC i dont bother with a login password, and since installing WHS2011 when W7 loads up it asks me for a username and password. Surely this isnt what i'll be forced into doing now??
I dont need login accounts lets alone passworded security for it, is there any way to tell it to GTFO my machine and bother someone else??
Its done the same on the laptop, and its completely unnecessary.
I wouldnt mind if it was because you'd gain direct access to the server, but you still need to enter passwords anyway. Can someone please tell me whether this can be fixed, because i've already had it upto the eyeballs with WHS2011 for today, and having spent money i really could do without spending to go from v1 to v2 (and im yet to buy a license, thankfully!), its turning into a real PITA and i've barely stopped since 2:30pm yesterday
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If you still have the will to live, check that WHS2011 and the clients trying to connect to it have their clocks set exactly (ish) the same.

I had mine an hour difference and the connection just wouldn't complete. I set them the same and it went straight in.
 
grrr, i just wrote a post and then got told it'd expired, and lost the lot :mad:

I've got it working now, but ive gone way beyond losing the will to live a few times now!

I reinstalled W7 on a spare drive, ran the connector... failed :confused:
tried some more things i'd read which didnt seem relevant earlier, but in desperation, anything worth a go...
Create a new user... failed
Check the ips and whatnot are fine... they appear to be
Then i went into my router, removed a load of firewall rules/services, unlocked the 2 machines from the IP's i'd designated to them, and rebooted everything. Ran the connector, and it worked :eek:

Tried that in my 3wk old W7 and of course it failed. That to me makes it even more bizarre, if i 'fixed' something that was stopping it working on a fresh install, and that doesnt work on the old, does that mean there was TWO+ problems, and now ive solved 1 (?router?) but theres at least another still there for the original W7 install??

So for the last 2hrs ive been reinstalling stuff onto the new W7 (and 2011) and im going to cross my fingers and hope for the best. Everything seems to be going smoothly for the time being (ive yet to request a backup), but i think ive got most things set up how i'd like them.
If it can last the weekend without issue, i'll be ordering the license midweek and hopefully that'll shut it up :D and i can grab any updates out there.

The login issue i mentioned last night, thats now gone, but it seems that was related to the connector software. Once i'd got that working it disappeared the next time i logged in, its not bad when you have to type a username once a day or so (i can go weeks on my PC tbh) but when that connector insists on a reboot after a failed attempt before it'll try again, its v.annoying.

Anyway, thanks for trying to help, i've posted on 'wegotserved' in the past, normally i just use it to find answers, but when ive asked for help ive never had a reply... which is annoying given that its a niche area and thats supposedly dedicated to it, and you dont even get basic suggestions. Just makes everything more frustraiting.
 
Just remembered something else i was wondering about...
I've got a 300gb HDD as my OS primary, split 60/240, and i know 240 wont hold anything like what i need for backups, so ive basically removed the 2nd partition's drive letter so i dont have to look at it, and allocated D: to a 2Tb drive which will hold the backups and most storage (its closer to how i had WHS).

If the primary partition/?volume? requires more, im assuming it'll still be able to re-allocate it at will, right?? or was that one something that falls under DE?
If it doesnt, can I just delete/shrink the volume and extend the C: volume if the Dashboard doesnt manage it like WHS v1 did.
 
There is no DE, but you should be able to extend the C drive into the space that the deleted D drive took if you need to.

Regarding Usernames and passwords, you can set windows to autologin with a username and password from the users applet.
 
Tempted to get Home Server and the price makes me want to get it even more.

My question is, how well would it run games? Gaming will not be the primary use of the Home Server but it would be nice to know that i can still blow people up without issue!

I've read that Server 2003 was able to play most games with a few tweaks so I guess Home Server 2011 would be the same?

Cheers.
 
From Microsoft's website:

Can I install and run standard Windows applications on Windows Home Server?

No, regular Windows software may not be installed on Windows Home Server. Only add-ins that are specifically designed for Windows Home Server can be installed on a Windows Home Server machine. Attempting to install software that is not an add-in can potential break the integrity of Windows Home Server and is not supported by Microsoft or OEMs.
 
Words you don't want to read on returning to your server after a couple of weeks away:

"system disk not found..." :eek:

Just had 2 days of sweat and heart ache trying to resurrect my server after finding it dead. I tried the standard rebuild, but half way through it ran a chkdsk of the system disk, and on finding errors kindly informed me that there wasn't enough free space on the drive to fix the errors - installation aborted :mad: When I subsequently tried to rebuild I only had the option for a fresh install - no repair (ie. all data to be wiped)! Luckily, on a hunch, I fired up the Samsung HDD diagnostic utility and worked out that the whole system disk was missing from the system. After much sweating, and having seen stuff like this before - I decided to swap out the Sata cable, and hey presto - the drive returned; the repair option re-appeared; and it continued the install without further issue :cool:

I even felt brave enough to unlock the 2 'spare' cores on my PH2 550 - so now have a quad core instead of a dual - result!

I did notice, while browsing for add-on, that some people are using MS Security Essentials on their WHS boxes? Anyone here doing it - any good - how did you get around the 'not a supported OS' issue?
Also... is anyone currently backing up their server, and if so how? Can't help but feel if the OS drive did die, I would be in real trouble.
 
System that's running my WHSv1 box has gone kaput somehow, so I've just ordered new MB/CPU/mem combo.

Hopefully I can just swap the hardware over and boot up and either just run, or do a repair of the WHS OS and not lose any data, correct?

Has anyone done this before, and can they give any bits of advice :)
 
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