A Serious Windows Home Server Pain Point

pain I talked about my experiences with not having a solid backup strategy back at the end of August.  My solution included using a Microsoft Windows Home Server (WHS) system to handle backups for all of the computers on my home/office network.  I wanted to give a bit of follow-up to the experience and explain a huge pain point I found.

Reflection

I have been using the Acer Aspire Easystore H340 Windows Home Server for the past 6 weeks, backing up several computers on a nightly basis and it has been working flawlessly.  Computers are set to backup each night between 6pm and 11pm and this gives WHS plenty of time to complete all incremental backups with time to spare.  Backing up from Macs using SuperDuper works great too.

The WHS has been great to store all of the software we use on a regular basis when we need to share installation files. 

A Pain Point

I did run into a rather annoying problem this weekend that resulted in a kludgy workaround.  When I setup the WHS in August I had purchased an extra disk to be using in the WHS after I was confident my Windows development system was functioning fine.  The idea was to take out the 1TB (Western Digital Green) and replace with a 1 TB Western Digital Black drive, which is faster than the green.

I cloned the green drive to the black, took out the green and rebooted the development system, all worked great.  I was informed by WHS that my system had a new hard drive and I needed to log in to WHS Console and configure to recognize the new disk.  When running the wizard, I was greeted by this message when almost to the end:

This computer is not online or Windows Home Server cannot access the computer’s hard drive. Please make sure the computer is powered on and connected to your home network.

After much trial-and-error I could not get the new drive to be recognized by WHS.  It was aware there was a new drive but could not recognize it was a replacement for the old drive. I came up with a solution that worked but is not ideal:

  1. Uninstall Windows Home Server Connector
  2. While using Windows Home Server Console, remove PC from list of backed up PC’s.
  3. Cleanup backup database using the "Cleanup Now" button in the WHS Console
  4. Reinstall Windows Home Server Connector – install from either original DVD or by accessing via the Software share on WHS.
  5. Retry setting up backups – should now be able to configure backup for system.

I performed actions 2-3 from the actual WHS itself by utilizing a Remote Desktop Connection to the WHS.  I then had to reconfigure the backup for my system, including all of the folders I had previously Excluded.  This wasn’t a surprise but don’t forget to do this or your backup might be a lot bigger than expected.

UPDATE: Joel Ross made a comment suggesting the correct way to change out the disks under WHS:

I think (and I could be wrong here) the proper way to do this would have been to do a back up with the old disk in the dev box, replace the drive in the dev box, and then do a restore on the dev box using the windows home server software. I haven’t replaced a drive in any of my machines yet, but that’s what I’ve read others doing.

Conclusion

This solution certainly worked but was not a very clean and user-friendly way of replacing a disk.  This begs the question – what happens if I have a disk failure and need to replace the drive, will I be able to connect and restore?  The answer is not clear at this point.

After some searching around the web and there are many reports of this issue back to the WHS CTP and it has yet to be resolved as of WHS Service Pack 2.  It appears it could be due to the fact the new drive is not on the same SATA connection as the previous drive but, in my opinion, this should not matter.  A fix for this is needed or I will not have as much confidence as I once had for Windows Home Server as a key backup solution.

If anyone has a better solution than the one I have found, I would love to hear it. If there is a released fix for this, I would like to hear about it as well. I am running on Windows 7 Ultimate RTM, if that matters. 

  • http://www.rosscode.com/ Joel Ross

    I think (and I could be wrong here) the proper way to do this would have been to do a back up with the old disk in the dev box, replace the drive in the dev box, and then do a restore on the dev box using the windows home server software. I haven’t replaced a drive in any of my machines yet, but that’s what I’ve read others doing.

  • http://www.rosscode.com Joel Ross

    I think (and I could be wrong here) the proper way to do this would have been to do a back up with the old disk in the dev box, replace the drive in the dev box, and then do a restore on the dev box using the windows home server software. I haven’t replaced a drive in any of my machines yet, but that’s what I’ve read others doing.

  • http://www.accidentaltechnologist.com/ Rob Bazinet

    @Joel – Ah you could be right. I didn’t try to find the way to do this before I actually was a bit too far along. I would think it should just have worked the way I did it or at least let me manually tell WHS I was sure this was my backup drive. Anyway, thanks for the tip, I will update the post in a bit with your suggestion.

  • http://www.accidentaltechnologist.com Rob Bazinet

    @Joel – Ah you could be right. I didn’t try to find the way to do this before I actually was a bit too far along. I would think it should just have worked the way I did it or at least let me manually tell WHS I was sure this was my backup drive. Anyway, thanks for the tip, I will update the post in a bit with your suggestion.

  • http://casiopathfindershop.net/ Casio Pathfinder

    The proper way to do this would have been to do a back up with the old disk in the dev box, replace the drive in the dev box, and then do a restore on the dev box using the windows home server software.

  • http://casiopathfindershop.net Casio Pathfinder

    The proper way to do this would have been to do a back up with the old disk in the dev box, replace the drive in the dev box, and then do a restore on the dev box using the windows home server software.

  • http://usingwindowshomeserver.com/author/mpeele/ Michael Peele

    I was playing around with disks a while back on my home desktop machine. Apparently, I put the boot disk back, but "not on the same SATA connection as the previous drive but, in my opinion, this should not matter. A fix for this is needed or I will not have as much confidence as I once had for Windows Home Server as a key backup solution."
    That disk was the same disk, just on a different SATA port. Annoyed the crap out of me.
    I agree with you, this is something to fix.

  • http://usingwindowshomeserver.com/author/mpeele/ Michael Peele

    I was playing around with disks a while back on my home desktop machine. Apparently, I put the boot disk back, but "not on the same SATA connection as the previous drive but, in my opinion, this should not matter. A fix for this is needed or I will not have as much confidence as I once had for Windows Home Server as a key backup solution."

    That disk was the same disk, just on a different SATA port. Annoyed the crap out of me.

    I agree with you, this is something to fix.

  • http://www.dailyindia.com/blog Mike Swanberg

    I also have an Acer EasyStore H340 and have been having troubles with it (looks like a Caviar Green drive went belly-up, and WHS doesn’t recover gracefully from such an event… meaning it doesn’t recover at all). I really would love to find a good resource to help me get it running more smoothly. Any ideas?
    And could someone direct me to where I can find the steps to do this: "The proper way to do this would have been to do a back up with the old disk in the dev box, replace the drive in the dev box, and then do a restore on the dev box using the windows home server software."
    I’ve found where I can set up a drive to be the WHS share backup, but nowhere to backup the WHS iteslf.
    Sorry about all the questions… I’m a tech veteran, but a raw n00b with the WHS.
    Thanks,
    -Mike

  • http://www.dailyindia.com/blog Mike Swanberg

    I also have an Acer EasyStore H340 and have been having troubles with it (looks like a Caviar Green drive went belly-up, and WHS doesn’t recover gracefully from such an event… meaning it doesn’t recover at all). I really would love to find a good resource to help me get it running more smoothly. Any ideas?

    And could someone direct me to where I can find the steps to do this: "The proper way to do this would have been to do a back up with the old disk in the dev box, replace the drive in the dev box, and then do a restore on the dev box using the windows home server software."

    I’ve found where I can set up a drive to be the WHS share backup, but nowhere to backup the WHS iteslf.

    Sorry about all the questions… I’m a tech veteran, but a raw n00b with the WHS.

    Thanks,

    -Mike

  • Solomon

    Go to the Microsoft website to confirm that you can reproduce this bug and vote for it to get resolved: connect.microsoft.com/…/error-this-comp

  • Solomon

    Go to the Microsoft website to confirm that you can reproduce this bug and vote for it to get resolved: connect.microsoft.com/…/error-this-comp

  • SandraMillhouse

    I never thought that the Windows Home Server is such a pain. All the feedback received about it was positive (well, above average anyway). I'll try to find an answer to one of the questions in your article. I'm really curious what happens in case of a disk failure.
    Sandra Millhouse | Cheap virtual server