Windows Home Server

I'm thinking about getting this. The 2011 version looks pretty good for backing up all my data, and keeping all my data in one place, instead of spanned across various machines.

Has anyone else used this? I'd like to hear what people think.

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Comments

ptilsen

We've actually used WHS for clients. Exclusively very small businesses and non-businesses, but still. WHS is a very good product overall, and the 2011 version is great. I'd recommend it.

tpatt100

I bought the HP one a few years ago and it was running great and worked great. Then one day it just died. When I boot it up it just hung there, I couldn't connect with the restore disk, and I could not do a system restore either. Come to find out the OS itself was corrupted and at the time I couldn't find a way to get my data off the drives. I checked one of the more popular WHS blogs and people there who had the same thing happened to them had to send it back to HP to get it reloaded. Mine was out of warranty and the cost was over a hundred dollars to get it serviced. I just ended up getting a 500 GB external drive and said to heck with it and wiped the drives and dumped the box.

odysseyelite

MAC_Addy wrote: »

I'm thinking about getting this. The 2011 version looks pretty good for backing up all my data, and keeping all my data in one place, instead of spanned across various machines.

Has anyone else used this? I'd like to hear what people think.

I run WHS 2003. I never upgraded to 2008 because they got rid of the drive extended.

I used to love it when using a media center pc for streaming all my videos and music. Now that I used a wedtv box I don't really need all the graphical tiles.

I've had a few scares with the system disk having issues. I does do system backups, and I have seen friends restore their laptops within minutes after a bad internal disk.

Main points: used raid and backup your important data to a usb drive.

If I was going to do it all over again, I'd just get a NAS with mirror drives.

cknapp78

I am actually in the process of finishing up and converting to a Linux Home Server Box. Had WHS 2003 and 2008. 2003 was better because of the drive extender. 2008 had a lot of nice bells and whistles but died more than Windows ME! Finally decided to scrap it and loaded Fedora along with MediaTomb so my kids could stream to their iPads. Went with Samba for file sharing my cert books and comic books :P

Overall it was a fun learning experience. I had only worked with Linux for a few years going back to 2005. Hadn't found the time since then. Must say I am impressed with the improvements.

JeanM

What are you guys using for data backup / raid? I would hate to put everything in one place and if it fails,, POOF there it all goes

Does WHS have good built in raid support or do you use external san/nas box?

kriscamaro68

JeanM wrote: »

What are you guys using for data backup / raid? I would hate to put everything in one place and if it fails,, POOF there it all goes

Does WHS have good built in raid support or do you use external san/nas box?

Get yourself Windows Server 8 and use storage spaces. It is awesome. It allows you to take usb/ide/sata drives and combine them all together to make a huge drive. It also gives you raid like support such as parity and can even copy your data 2 or 3 times if you like.

Check out this article: How to Use Windows 8′s Storage Spaces to Mirror & Combine Drives - How-To Geek

tpatt100

JeanM wrote: »

What are you guys using for data backup / raid? I would hate to put everything in one place and if it fails,, POOF there it all goes

Does WHS have good built in raid support or do you use external san/nas box?

I used to use WHS for backing up my PC but then I figured if I had 2 TB of storage why not just store it all there and free up the space? Then the HP WHS died on me and I could not get the data off the drives due to the striping of data (at least when I tried I could not and when I looked it up it said I was SOL) at the time.

JeanM

I have downloaded Server 2008 and WHS (legal through school I attend after work), installed both the other night on a spare box to play with (wiped 2003 that was on there since last year).

Still not sure if putting a whole pc out to run the os etc to host the data is better vs. putting one of the nas/san boxes that you can buy and load with a couple of hard drives and connect to a switch using a 1gb link?

WafflesAndRootbeer

The problem with NAS boxes is that they have a lot of drawbacks such as low performance, not so great software, design flaws/quirks, poor RAID implementation, and a higher price than a comparable dedicated server or FreeNAS setup.

tpatt100

WafflesAndRootbeer wrote: »

The problem with NAS boxes is that they have a lot of drawbacks such as low performance, not so great software, design flaws/quirks, poor RAID implementation, and a higher price than a comparable dedicated server or FreeNAS setup.

I guess it depends on what you want to do with it, I know it seems companies stop supporting the devices quickly like they do with home routers because they want you to buy the latest and greatest. So a Windows solution offers a lot more flexibility.

If I did it again I would like to build a small form factor PC for storage, streaming, etc and focus on building one that is ultra quiet.

cmitchell_00

I currently using Acronis B&R 10/11 versions for my Windows 2003/2008 physcial and virtual servers. I back-up to an external hard drive and NAS to be on the safe side. When I get some more money I will purchase an nice SAN that can take the back-up with RAID 6 or 10. I can't afford the offsite backup of the cloud yet but; soon it will be more affordable; which I'm not referring to Drop Box.

check it out The Top 10 Best Online Backup

tr1x

I wouldn't waste my money on that, honestly. If you're just backing stuff up, install Linux on your "server" and use rsync. It's extremely efficient.. and free. Any monkey can write a simple rsync script real quick. Install Cygwin (Linux emulator) on your Windows machine and you'd be good to go. This is what I do anyway, a free and efficient solution.

On the other hand, if you're doing it because you want to play with WHS some, and this is your way to justify that, then go for it.

JeanM

Agreed. I don't see a point of dedicating a full pc for backup if it's not doing anything else, seems like a waste especially if there is no RAID. Might as well just use external eSATA/USB2/3 box?

Just my 2 cents.

cknapp78

tr1x wrote: »

I wouldn't waste my money on that, honestly. If you're just backing stuff up, install Linux on your "server" and use rsync. It's extremely efficient.. and free. Any monkey can write a simple rsync script real quick. Install Cygwin (Linux emulator) on your Windows machine and you'd be good to go. This is what I do anyway, a free and efficient solution.

On the other hand, if you're doing it because you want to play with WHS some, and this is your way to justify that, then go for it.

This monkey agrees. Exactly what I did

ally_uk

Sod the windows Freenas it