When computers fail, they really fail. They fail hard. Many hours of weekend time is taken up rebuilding, reformatting and redata-ing (?) the broken computer. Time is valuable!
Now I've had a personal experience of the sanity saving Windows Home Server automated backup. In the most recent week, I have been self-building my own Windows Media Center. After a recent misplaced de-install, otherwise known as "user error", it was just easier to roll back to a previous version of the system.
A key selling point of the Windows Home Server in our house: automated backups.
The connector software is pre-packaged, ready for install from the server. Windows XP seemed to not be happy with running the installer from the server, so I copied the install folder to the desktop of the target PC and installed from there.
Windows Home Server backs up works one PC at a time, so I installed the Connector Software one by one on our PCs |
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| After typing in the server password, the PC 'joins' the server, and is ready to go |
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| In each instance, I started a manual backup from the client PCs |
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The restore process is a little more complex, involving the following steps:
- Make a Restore CD from the supplied .ISO file
- Reboot the target PC with the new Restore CD
- Log into the Home Server using the Administrator password
- Select the image from the server to restore (by date of backup)
- Choose the hard disk volume to restore the image to
- 18 minutes later, reboot the target PC
- Now have returned to the previous state of the PC
A key test in any backup environment is the quality of the restore. In fact, before trusting any backup, it is best to test a restore. This is a confidence test which I highly recommend.
It will save your sanity.
