SkyDrive on WHS 2011-One install is all you need
If you are like many and are jumping on the SkyDrive band wagon you might find yourself having to install it on many systems in your house. The issue soon becomes with many of these services is that you end up installing on too many devices. Since I have many computers on my internal network, I decided that rather than installing it on each computer, I would install it on Windows Home Server and make it accessible for all the systems. The one issue I ran into is SkyDrive will not work if you are not logged in. Below are the instructions on how to get it to run as a service with the right parameters. I set this up not only to work as a background task, but configured it so you can accessed it from anywhere on any system in your network.
Part 1 – Creating your Share and installing SkyDrive
- Go into your Dashboard and create a new “SHARE” called SkyDrive (or whatever you want to call it) and give access to any or all users you would like to use SkyDrive.
- RDP into your server and Install SkyDrive on your Server. Note you may get security prompts. If you do, click “ADD” and add those sites to the approved safe list and continue the installation.
- IMPORTANT! When you get to this prompt, click “Change” and point to “Share” (local disk not through the network) and click OK. This will set the default SkyDrive folder to the share, giving everyone who has access to that share on any of your home network computers the ability to use it without it being installed on each computer.
Part 2 – Setting it up as a service
- RDP into your server and launch the “Task Scheduler”. Next create a new task and set each of the settings as defined in the snapshots below.
When you are done. Reboot your server and test it by going to one of your client computers and copying files to the Share you created. If everything was done correctly, your files should be available online as well as your portable devices. If not, check your settings again in the task that you created. Enjoy!
Share
Category: Windows Home Server
Has anybody tried this on version 1 of WHS?
Infinidim
WHS v1 wouldn't install, even in XP mode with an error saying that it wasn't a valid Win32 application. I've tried compatability mode, etc. but no joy…
Coul this also work with SBS 2011 Essentials?
Yes, this works on SBS 2011.
One thing that I see in the pictures is that the "Stop the task if it runs long than: X days" is selected. This will stop the task after X days. Then you will no longer sync. This option should not be on for continued syncing.
Good catch. I took the screen shot before I went back and tweaked that.
[...] enabling it to be accessed from anywhere on any system in your network.You can find the tutorial here.SkyDrive on WHS 2011 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server – Your Personal Guide to [...]
Followed the instructions and it all works great. Excellent instructions. Thank you.
Glad it worked out. Saves a bit of space on all you clients.
Again, people putting up incorrect info
Thanks PCDoc!!
Do i need the create a new share? Can I not just use the existing pictures share? This would automatically backup all my pictures to the cloud?
Seems the skydrive app does not let me specify an existing folder it always creates a new one below the one you specify
Nice tutorial, exactly what I needed. Unfortunately, I tried to do it on Windows Server 2008 64bits but no luck. I've done all the steps but it doesn't work unless i login with the user on which i installed SkyDrive. If not, the scheduled task start but no synchronization take place. I've reached my patience end. If u can't help me I think I'll give up and try Dropbox.
I've done something similar with Dropbox on my WHS 2011 box. Would prefer to stick with one service and can't see an advantage to running Skydrive over Dropbox — are there any? Open to suggestions. Thanks.
Dropbox gives you 2GB of free Space (without the community-enabled upgrades), Skydrive gave me 25Gb for free! That's a point.
fetch feature doesn´t work for me but it syncs fine.. Can anyone of you guys fetch files from skydrive.com with this setup?
anyone got 100% CPU Useage on Skydrive in their WHS 2011?
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[...] You can find the tutorial here. [...]