A Microsoft Windows Home Server shortcoming
Category SystemDisk Backup
As I blogged in the past, I've been really pleased with my Windows Home Server (WHS), I use it for so many things, it backs up all my machines, it runs a Domino Server that replicates key databases from other servers, it runs uTorrent, it's my media server, it's my iPad music server, you get the idea, this little box not much bigger than a Bible does a lot of things. Recently it has been having issues though, the system drive had started to return errors writing to disk C, constantly logging bad sector failures etc. Now if this was a data disk that wouldn't be so bad as I could just remove it and replace it, but the C drive is the WHS system disk.
Now you can replace the system disk with a new one, and Microsoft provides a WHS system recovery disk, which basically creates a fresh install on a new system disk, whilst still keeping all the data nice and safe on those disks, but here's the problem, see I installed all those other apps on the WHS box, Domino, uTorrent, various WHS plugins etc. Well if I just put in a new disk and run the system recovery I need to install and configure all those applications again, which would be a major pain in the arse. There's been lots written on this on the web, with lots of amazement that Microsoft missed something so basic. You may think you can just use something like disk cloning software and be all set, but it isn't quite that simple, various registry settings reference offsets, disk unique IDs and device names etc. that make it a little more complicated. Fortunately the web comes to the rescue again, and someone has posted complete steps on how you can clone the WHS System Drive which can be found here How to successfully clone and upgrade a WHS system drive. So using a couple of SATA USB adapters, I successfully followed these instructions and now have a new system disk in the WHS, twice the size, and my Domino server and all the apps are happily running.
Hopefully, the new version of WHS that is planned by Microsoft will address this.
As I blogged in the past, I've been really pleased with my Windows Home Server (WHS), I use it for so many things, it backs up all my machines, it runs a Domino Server that replicates key databases from other servers, it runs uTorrent, it's my media server, it's my iPad music server, you get the idea, this little box not much bigger than a Bible does a lot of things. Recently it has been having issues though, the system drive had started to return errors writing to disk C, constantly logging bad sector failures etc. Now if this was a data disk that wouldn't be so bad as I could just remove it and replace it, but the C drive is the WHS system disk.
Now you can replace the system disk with a new one, and Microsoft provides a WHS system recovery disk, which basically creates a fresh install on a new system disk, whilst still keeping all the data nice and safe on those disks, but here's the problem, see I installed all those other apps on the WHS box, Domino, uTorrent, various WHS plugins etc. Well if I just put in a new disk and run the system recovery I need to install and configure all those applications again, which would be a major pain in the arse. There's been lots written on this on the web, with lots of amazement that Microsoft missed something so basic. You may think you can just use something like disk cloning software and be all set, but it isn't quite that simple, various registry settings reference offsets, disk unique IDs and device names etc. that make it a little more complicated. Fortunately the web comes to the rescue again, and someone has posted complete steps on how you can clone the WHS System Drive which can be found here How to successfully clone and upgrade a WHS system drive. So using a couple of SATA USB adapters, I successfully followed these instructions and now have a new system disk in the WHS, twice the size, and my Domino server and all the apps are happily running.
Hopefully, the new version of WHS that is planned by Microsoft will address this.
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Posted by Jeff Falkingham At 09:42:13 PM On 08/19/2010 | - Website - |