Windows Home Server - Resurrected…
Don’t ever call me a quitter! Not 3 days after I lambasted Windows Home Server, I felt a little sorry for it. That’s not to say I necessarily think it is any better, it’s just that I decided to give it one last chance - in a diminished capacity.
The diminished capacity? I decided it was only going to be allowed to perform backups under very strict supervision! Also I tried a whole new approach with the Remote Access part of the software. So, what did I do different?
Backups - I severely locked down the directories on my hard drive that I allowed Windows Home Server to backup. I coupled that with loading a real backup program (Personal Backup) that backs up my superset of files automatically behind the scenes to my network drive which has lots of space (unlike my server drive which is the only option to back up to using Windows Home Server). Those two things gave me back 35gb of hard drive space. Enough to move some of my other files to the shared user space so that they should be accessible via Remote Desktop.
Remote Desktop - The other thing I did was to convert my secondary router (which controls my T-Mobile @Home and my wireless access) to a bridge. This meant a whole series of scary reconfigurations during which time I didn’t actually know whether I would be able to use my PCs connected to the Internet (in fact I did discover that my main Verizon DSL router although allowing uPNP configuration, doesn’t work too well if you enable it). Anyway, after a while of going through all sorts of screens and rebooting everything (and I mean everything), my network kicked back into life. I then went into the Home Server settings and configured Remote Desktop for the new setup and it tells me everything is good. Until I actually go into the office on Monday and try it, I won’t know for certain though.
Yesterday evening I did burn a live Ubuntu CD and load that on my server and although it worked very well it didn’t ’see’ my windows network drives at all and so it wasn’t going to be a viable solution. Then I reconsidered reloading my Windows Server 2003 software again but at the end of the day, with a new backup program installed, Windows Home Server gets a temporary reprieve. Now the only plus point it has is acting as a Remote Desktop server. We’ll monitor its progress.
