If you’ve purchased or built a Home Server and now are having hardware problems *but* can find identical hardware you’ll have a relatively easy time recovering should the hard disks be okay.  This scenario is that you’ve banged something inside the computer and fried the motherboard, powersupply, or another major component.

How do you do you recover from this?

First assume that after the hardware failure that you’ve got working hard disks – if you do, just put them into the new computer with identical hardware and boot up, you should be good to go!  The idea here is that the hard disks contain all information about hardware devices and configuration.  Because the hardware is identical Home Server is unaware of any changes and as such just boots fine. 

If you’re hard disks have failed, or if you want to take the primary C: volume back to factory conditions read my next post – how to repair your home server when you’re unable to find identical replacement hardware.