Windows 7: Windows Home Server – Your genie in a box

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Pretty funny commercial actually.

I love my WHS, really useful. I am just now working on getting more functionality out of it (been using it solely for backups), but ran out of room, so I am adding 2 spare drives in.

~Lordbob

I just put together a PC using old parts and am going to put WHS on it to try it out. I have been wanting to do this for a while now, but just haven't had the time.

Good commercial. My oldest has just installed in his house, and indicated it really works good.

I have been using this product since it first came out. Backups are a great benefit of this server, but the ability to manipulate and re-size/reorder the partitions on my pc's, bare metal restores, and media management put it over the top. I just wish I had built it on an Ultra Low Power platform but it was not available at the time I built mine so I used AMD 3800+ with 5 drives (3@180gb, 2@500gb). If it ever has a problem (not one single hiccup so far) I will rebuild using something like the ATOM n330 platform. This current system I built from scratch is like the energizer bunny....it just keeps going and going and going....etc.

This has been my #1 recommendation to friends for a long, long time. It makes my pc admin bullet proof.

My wish list for this product would have to be a client for Apple and Linux products and I'm sure hell will freeze over before that happens which is kind of sad because the market is there waiting to be taken advantage of. Servers should be OS agnostic after all and many homes are a conglomeration of different systems such as mine.

Sounds good to me, and really wanted to try it out. For me though, there one major flaw in the plan; Windows Home Server will not backup Windows Seven Home Premium. You must use Windows Seven Professional or above. Personally I am dumbfounded by this move. What good is a Home Server that doesn't work with my Home Premium OS? I feel sorry for those who didn't take the time to investigate and bought it. At Least Microsoft could have given it a more honest, or a better descriptive name like Windows Professional Server.

I'm not aware of that limitation...I'm almost positive that it backs up Home Premium. I'm googling right now, but maybe one of the WHS can verify this for me.

I think people are confused with the inability to back up to a network location from within the Windows 7 Home Premium backup app. This is a premium or above only feature.

The backup process for Windows Home Server backing up client machines is a different process and thus should work just fine with Home Premium.

You may be totally correct here. All well and good. But why would anybody purchase this (so called) Home Server when I can get an open-source server to do the same thing for free?

Windows 7 Home Premium network backup

It does a WHOLE LOT MORE than just backup or file share. If that was all it did then yes by all means just use an open source server. There is currently NO open source server that will do all the things WHS does out of the box and with add-ins quite a few more. You COULD build one if you have enough time and knowledge but it would still be a very limited imitation. Just to save $98......Why bother, its cheap considering what you get and its based on Windows Server 2003 which is an excellent all around server.

As for backing up Windows 7 Home Premium....It will backup and restore ALL versons of Windows from XP through Windows 7 (not sure about 95,98 or 2000 as I don't run these anymore), but it will do all supported desktops and with a little configuring you can also manually backup and file share with Apple and Linux pc's. The only thing I am aware that you must have Pro or Ultimate for is Remote Desktop Administration from the Web using a remote pc and you can still access the shared files on a HP pc...just not connect RDP to it.

This is the limitation pparks mentioned.

Instead of trying to use the Windows PC backup feature, enable backup through the SERVER side, which should work just fine.

~Lordbob