JC - Technology and Stuff

After using Windows Home Server (WHS) since September 2008 with the trial version, I finally took the plunge and went ’street legal’ this week. At the same time I took an opportunity to up my disk storage (which had been my major gripe regarding WHS backup) by buying a 1 terabyte external drive from TigerDirect for the crazy price of $99.

The upgrade was fairly straightforward, but a little lengthy I have to admit. The installation of the 1TB drive took about 45 seconds, including configuring WHS to use it (I added it to the trial version before I upgraded the Operating System to the ’street legal’ version). One terabyte of storage is a crazy amount to have. It had better last me.

Anyway, enough of that. The main reason for the blog post is to talk about the WHS upgrade. I bought the OEM version from Amazon and saved myself a lot of dollars and simply put it in the DVD drive. WHS recognized the disk and gave me an option to reboot and install the new version. Of course I said ‘yes’. The next hour and a half were mostly very boring. Basically I went through exactly the same steps as I described in previous posts (links at bottom of this post) for the first hour or so. The reinstall recognized the new Hard Drive and the new configuration gave me the option to ‘mirror’ certain folders on backup to have multiple copies on different drives. I liked that idea.

After setting my admin password I was left with a fresh install that needed all my tweaking that I had previously done on my old version redoing. I should have made notes about some of the things I did last time! I had to recreate user accounts (even though the install had preserved the old user folders); set up backup settings again; and go through the remote access procedures again (which had caused me so many headaches last time around). I had trouble this time around as well, but mostly because last time I ended up giving my server a static IP so that I could make once-off router modifications to punch the right holes in the firewall, and I had forgotten to do that this time. That process took me nearly twenty minutes to perform this time around. But in the end the new system looks exactly like the old system (which is good), with the added bonus that I now can make complete backups to the server’s 1TB drive from all my network PCs.

I can’t honestly say I’ve come to love WHS over the months I’ve been using it, but I’ve come to tolerate it without prejudice. It does what it claims to do in a mostly non-maintenance-hungry fashion and that’s Ok with me.

So, if you’re scared of trying Windows Home Server, read my earlier posts and give it a whirl. It will give you peace of mind for backups, remote access to all your music and movies, a home website if you choose, and sharable folders across your network. Not bad for a hundred bucks!

UPDATE: Since installing the USB drive I have noticed that it seems to go to sleep after a period of inactivity  - screwing up WHS in a pretty big way, especially on a couple of backups recently. I’ve had to turn the drive off and then turn it back on again to kick everything back into life and clear up my error messages. Don’t know if this will continue or not. I’ll post an update in a week or so.

Links to Previous Windows Home Server articles:  Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four

Well, I’ve been using a replacement for ‘Windows Explorer’, ‘File Manager’, ‘My Documents’, whatever you want to call it, or do call it, for over a week now. It’s a free downloadable product called Q-Dir.

What I like about it is that it’s multi-pane and means I don’t have to open lots of damn windows, just to copy a file from one place to another or quickly see what the name of another file in another completely different directory is called. Each pane is totally independent and can be configured differently from any other pane. You can also choose to use an all-in-one directory tree, or have a directory tree available for each pane.

The actual layout you pick, and the exact number of panes you choose to display are left to you, with many combinations possible. as long as I keep remembering to use it, I love it. The problem is retraining myself to use it instead of the installed default Microsoft product.

Give it a try - I think you’ll like it!

I very rarely blog about what others write of but this particular piece of information absolutely intrigued me.

It’s really just a map of the world. However it’s not a traditional map, but one that is geared around country income per capita and overall health of population. Click on the image below and be amazed…

Fascinating Photograph: 180 days of the sun in motion - http://tinyurl.com/7ojakx