News Windows Home Server 'Vail' preview leaked

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2010/01/29/windows-home-server-vail-preview-leaked/1

A preview version of the next edition of WHS - codenamed 'Vail' - has been leaked to file sharing sites, giving users a glimpse of the future.

 

I wonder who in MS leaked this? I would say it was very likely to be a marketing ploy, look how well all those free beta of Win 7 went down, turned opinion.
But who needs a WHS anyway?

 

I used one.

And it's utter ****. If a disk drops the services simply crash, and despite having "duplication" it copies the files TO THE SAME DISK

They are going to do a public beta anyway so someone outside of MS leaked it I'd imagine. Anything will be better than the current WHS, but none of us can upgrade because we'd loose all our data

 

I do.

1 shop PC, 1 notebook, 1 gaming PC & 1 media centre PC all backed up between midnight and 2am. They wake up from sleep, backup, and bugger off back to sleep again. Having been through data loss issues with the shop PC [theft], and the subsequent VAT misery, it was well worth £60+VAT and some old spares to keep all my data safe.
Anyone who wouldn't want their data safe is clearly a mental.

Bindi:- Mine has been trouble free, even when a 500GB disk failed, folder duplication worked fine for me. Post PowerPack 1 WHS has been utterly dependable.
If it looks like a required upgrade it's not a big deal. Install new WHS machine, re-install connector on clients, leave on for 8 hours, job done.

If you are using the WHS a a media server too, with media only stored on that server than it will be a big deal, but no-one in their right mind would have important data in only one place.

 

Mines a pain in the ass. Constantly times out when trying to move files from server to pc. Im actually in the process of taking all data off now so that I can format the entire thing and start again.

I can assure you trying to move 5TB when a server constantly times out is a nightmare!

 

not me i'm running 2008R2

but i would be interested in running this as a secondary to create weekly images

 

Never had a problem with mine. Backups work flawlessly, I also use it for torrents and as a media server over the network. It's never crashed in the last 18months though I do have to install another hard drive as my current storage is just about full.

 

The folders duplicate onto the *same disk* though, at least this is what always happens on mine. I had a 1TB disk failure recently and instead of managing it properly it gave me 50 "duplication errors" which the only way to fix is to delete the files completely (that's MS official "help"!!) and then when I had to remove the disk the service crashed or it complained the disk was removed and just sat there refusing to do anything. In the end I had to format and restart the whole thing because it was unrecoverable.

 

Neon, are you networked via a router? Many of them can't cope with that kind of throughput. Or running on-access scanning AV software?
I dropped AVG and moved to MSE as the on access scanner in AVG made transfers awful.

 

That doesn't seem right, I'm sure the whole duplication malarkey is supposed to use seperate disks, where available. Yep, page 8 reviewers guide for WHS.
Pre PP1 I had the corruption of shared folders bug, where one set got corrupted, and then duplicated, but this was fixed in PP1.
Since then no issues.

You have my sympathies for that man, that must have been a biyatch pita to sort out.

 

I use WHS on a HP EX470. Never an issue, and it doesn't back up to the same disk if you set it up to back up to a different one. Mine has 4 disks in it, the 500GB it came with, and three 1TB disks. I had one disk fail, replaced it, rebuilt, zero issues.

I for one would be tempted to give it a go.

 

I was making up new swear words last Saturday.

I don't know why mine is copying data to the same disk then, but I put on 300GB of stuff and it just filled a single drive, and a little of the next one. There's four disks in it with 2TB!! Stupid, stupid thing

 

meh, its all crap far easier to run vista or W7 and use network drives, and VNC if required.

 

i hate to ask stupid questions, but are you sure you enabled folder duplication on those folders?

 

Yes. 110% sure.

Burnout - WHS has specific things that are tailored for headless use.

 

WHS is just a toy for posers wanting to tell everyone how cool and smart they are, having a 'server' at home, I don't really see this as a front page material.

 

That's kind of harsh don't you think? Actually we're reviewing a WHS from Asus right now, and there are plenty of people above who have told you that it works for them!

 

Just because you cannot see the advantages of having a home server (regardless of it being Windows or linux based) does not mean the rest of us cannot.

I use it for media streaming around my home, also backups of photos and important data from the computers in our home. Also being accessable from anywhere in the world via a web page login is rather handy.

 

The leaked build is a CTP4 which was leaked by someone who was on the WHS Connect that had authority to download it.

As for duplication to the same disk, I thought that as well, until I tried to delete the files from another windows installation (I had a 250gb 2.5" hard disk in my home server, and the home server software was killed due to a version of Avast! WHS edition that died.)

Windows Home server creates file system hardlinks (another reason why WHS requires NTFS), which link to all the duplicated files across all drives in the system, allowing all the files to be accessed through a single folder.

I expected you of all people to know this Bindibadgi, I always thought you were a vast pool of techie knowledge.

 

Forgot to add, you can test this yourself by using a tool like the free JDiskReport utility - it reads the hardlinked files as being real, which means that it detects twice as much user data as there actually is - as is shown by windows, which can tell the difference.