Datasheet

 If you need to retrieve an old copy of a file, WHS makes it easy. I talk
about the ins and outs in Part V.
 WHS Backup lets you restore an entire hard drive. This ain’t your
father’s backup program: if one of the PCs on your network suddenly
loses its C: drive — or you get clobbered by a virus, or a rogue Windows
automatic update freezes your Windows XP machine tighter than a
penguin’s tail feathers — WHS’s computer restore feature (Chapter 13)
lets you bring back an earlier version of the entire hard drive with very
little fuss.
 If you shell out the shekels and put two or more hard drives in your
WHS computer, Windows Home Server
mirrors backup data: Separate,
individually recoverable copies of the backup reside on more than one
hard drive. That way, if one of the WHS computer’s hard drives fail, you
can resurrect everything. Try doing that with your one-button-backup
hard drive.
 The backup program itself packs lots of smarts. For example, if you have
the same file on two different drives, or even on two different computers,
WHS only maintains one backup. In fact, if pieces of files are duplicated
across multiple machines, only one copy of each piece — each Lego
block, if you will — gets stored. WHS maintains a table that keeps track
of which piece goes where on what machine.
Very slick.
Sharing folders
Any server worth its salt lets you store folders on the server and get at those
folders from other computers on the network. That’s the premise behind
shared folders.
If you’ve struggled with shared folders in Windows XP or Vista (or even
Windows 98 or Windows for Workgroups 3.11, for that matter), you have no
doubt become conversant with
\\really\convoluted\folder\names.
Heaven help ya if you want to look at the photos of your summer vacation
three years ago, and can’t remember if they’re sitting on the TV room com-
puter’s D: drive, or the bedroom’s
C:\Documents and Settings\Bill\
Desktop\Vacation Pics
folder.
Windows Home Server creates a small set of pre-defined folders for you,
and you can readily add more. People using your network can easily find
the folders — and (if you give them permission) stick stuff in the folders
and take stuff out. The great saving grace about WHS shared folders: they
sport simple names like, oh,
Photos or Music (see Figure 1-2). None of this
\\computername\drive\folder\subfolder garbage.
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Chapter 1: Bringing Windows Home Server to Life
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