jaybaz [MS] WebLog : Windows Home Server

How to make a bootable USB flash drive

jaybaz_MS — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:25:00 GMT

This can be useful with Windows Home Server in a number of ways.

- If you are building your own WHS in a small case, and don't have a DVD drive, you can transfer the WHS software to a USB flash drive of WHS to install from.

- If you are building your own WHS and require special drivers for your mass storage devices or network connection, you can make a USB flash drive of WHS w/ drivers. You'll especially want this if the primary drive fails, and you want to use the "Server Recovery" option.

- If your PCs that are connected to the WHS require special drivers for your mass storage devices or network connection, you can make a USB flash drive of the recovery CD which includes these drivers.

Here are instructions for making such beasts. Written for WinPE, but applicable to WHS. http://www.realtime-vista.com/general/2007/05/preapring_windows_pe_to_boot_f.htm

My Windows Home Server

jaybaz_MS — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:34:00 GMT

I built my own Windows Home Server box. You can buy some decent pre-built units, but I wanted to build my own. I wanted a small, quiet, low-power device. I was willing to compromise on performance & capacity to get it. I decided that my collection of movies should live on my media center, just because I wanted to have a small WHS.

Dell D600 laptop

A laptop meets the small & low-power requirements without effort. They also have a built-in keyboard/mouse/display and battery backup, while still being small.

Dell leases these to corporations. After the lease expires, they are sold for cheap. I bought mine at a popular auction site for ~$300. It had a 1.4GHz P4 and 512MB RAM. Most have USB 2.0 (important for adding storage) and GigE (important for pushing a lot of data back and forth). Many have Wi-Fi, which may be useful.

D600 parts are easy to come by, and their online manuals are very good.

Pair of 160GB 2.5" drives

Hard drive prices (per GB) follow a "saddle" curve. At the time of building, 120GB were at the bottom of the curve; 160GB were a bit higher. Above 160GB were much higher. I knew that I wanted space for 100GB today; 160GB would give me a little breathing room. Since replacing drives is expensive (and replacing the primary drive is annoying), breathing room seemed wise.

For the secondary drive, I bought a 2nd HD caddy, which replaces the DVD drive.

Great print server!

It's small enough that it can fit comforably under my printer on my desk. (I was careful to leave a little venting room.) I like simple, obvious names, so my printer path is now \\SERVER\Printer. The USB cable from server to printer only spans ~6 inches.

What if I need more storage?

One of these days I will probably decide that my movies should be moved to the server. I rip my DVDs lossless, and currently have ~400GB, so I'm going to need more room. Upgrading the internal 2.5" drives won't be feasible for a while - they're still too small. Until then, I will need to add external storage.

I can use the pair of USB 2.0 ports. With these, an external enclosure with a pair of large 3.5" drives are a good choice. (Two drives means I can fully use the USB bandwidth without dramatically overloading it.).

Another option is to get a PCMCIA card (there's only one slot) with USB 2.0 or eSATA.

One downside is that the external drives won't be on the battery that's built in. That means I will need a separate UPS if I want them protected.

Windows Home Server on a virtual machine

jaybaz_MS — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:17:00 GMT

Here at Microsoft, when we talk about Windows Home Server, one of the things that comes up pretty often is a question about hosting WHS in a virtual machine under Virtual Server. Most often people want this because they already have one always-on machine (a doman controller, a media center PC, etc.), and they don't want another.

In discussing the problem, a few key bits of advice have come up, and I thought it would be a good idea to write them down here.

One of the key problems appears when you consider using the WHS to back up the host. It can certainly be done, but when the host goes down, restoring it is a catch 22.

Dedicate whole drives

Take whole drives & put only one file on each - the .VHD. Make it as large as possible.

Use external drives

Make all of WHS's drives external. Consider putting them all in a single enclosure for convenience. eSATA w/ port multipliers may be a good choice.

Have a 2nd physical machine ready

It should already have Virtual Server or Virtual PC installed. A laptop is fine. Make sure it has appropriate ports for the WHS drives.

Recovery strategy

When the regular host goes down:

Unplug the WHS drives
Carry them to the 2nd host, and plug in
Boot the WHS virtual machine. (You may need to create a new VM with the existing .VHD files.)
Restore the primary host
Unplug the WHS drives
Carry them back to the primary host, and plug in
Boot the WHS virtual machine

Backing up your data

jaybaz_MS — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 21:21:00 GMT

I've been engaged in a bunch of discussion about how to keep your personal data safe at home. I hear a lot of people say they want to build a RAID5 array in a server, and put their family photos on it.

I can think of many ways to lose my data:

Hardware Failure
Fire, earthquake, or other natural event
Power surge
Theft
Confiscation by police
Virus, Trojan, or other malware
Accidentally deleting it

While all of them are potentially real, only #1 & #7 are actually likely to affect my data. In my lifetime, I have lost data to #1 & #7, and never to #2-#6.

RAID5 and the like only protect against #1, and even then a dying controller can nuke your data.

Seriously though, my biggest fear is that *I* will delete my data.

The only way I know to protect against all of them is to have an offsite and offline backup. (Even that may not be enough for #5.)

To that end, I keep an external drive at work, disconnected. I update it periodically. Luckily this is simple enough for anyone to do. (You probably need to be selective about what you back up this way, to keep it all on one drive).

Another strategy that complements this one quite well is to provide mutual data duplication with a friend or relative in another part of the world. The further, the safer. Foldershare makes this doable.