Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 Released

bodogbodog · **22nd July 2008, 07:39 AM**

Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 update has now been released and is available now.

Power Pack 1 provides a range of improvements. These include the following:
• Support for home computers that are running Windows Vista x64 editions
• Backup of Home Server shared folders
• Improvements to remote access
• More efficient power consumption
• Improved performance

Additionally, this update resolves the data corruption issue

The Knowledge Base article and PP1 download is available here

pantonious · **22nd July 2008, 11:08 AM**

grrr, beat me too it

http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/...nd-get-it.aspx

GlenR · **22nd July 2008, 11:21 AM**

Thanks bogogbodog. Some interesting features in the release notes.

Quote:

Home Server Backup

You can can now back up and restore your home server shared folders to an external hard drive.
When you add a hard drive to your home server, you are given an option to use the hard drive to back up your home server shared folders. When you select this option, your home server appears in the Computers & Backup tab. You can then use Backup Now to back up your shared folders to the hard drive.
You can view and restore your home server shared folder backups on the Computers & Backup tab.

This may be a more effective data security option than duplicated folders. Dedicate some (half?) of your storage to actual backup rather than duplication. Might it also improve data access performance since there will be no duplication?

Might be worth a try...

Sven Nijs · **22nd July 2008, 11:55 AM**

Good news. Just hoping it doesn't break my currently stable set-up.

tipstir · **23rd July 2008, 02:27 AM**

Do and image backup of your stable setup just in case, I do that always now with Acronis True Image. You can do it with Ghost also an etc..

woohoo · **23rd July 2008, 10:14 AM**

I installed last night. Everything went OK and backups were reported successfully overnight. Fingers crossed

Sven Nijs · **23rd July 2008, 08:33 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by woohoo

I installed last night. Everything went OK and backups were reported successfully overnight. Fingers crossed

Same here.
Updated the WHS Disk Management add-in to the PP1 compatible version while I was at it.

krypto · **23rd July 2008, 08:49 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by tipstir

Do and image backup of your stable setup just in case, I do that always now with Acronis True Image. You can do it with Ghost also an etc..

Do you have Acronis installed on WHS or did you use a boot disk?

woohoo · **23rd July 2008, 10:21 PM**

I haven't been able to find a new Home Computer Restore CD with PP1, though this was going to be part of the package I thought (http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/...available.aspx)
Does anyone know when it should be available?
Might be I just can't find my way around the MS website....

Sven Nijs · **24th July 2008, 12:24 AM**

This seems to be the latest (21.07.08):
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

woohoo · **24th July 2008, 01:03 AM**

Thanks Sven - doesn't call itself a beta anymore. I'll give it a go.

Zilch · **24th July 2008, 01:39 AM**

Having the option to back-up to an external drive is cool. It's not quite as cool as I imagined though. Basically it lets you tag each share with the name of an external drive. Problem is though, I have (for example) in the "Videos" share stacks of recorded TV shows (that are replacable and not worthy of backing up) and home videos (which are not replaceable and need to be backed up).

A nice option would be to say back up everything which is Duplicated - anything worth mirroring is probably worth backing up to external disk - but this has the same problem, ie it's only available on a share level.

I guess I'll have to make a "TV" share or something similar, but then I suspect it won't work with the "Media Library Sharing" feature which seems to be limited to the predefined share names...