The Home Server Show 13 - Antivirus for Windows Home Server and Kaspersky 2009

Here are the E-mails discussed in the show. James wrote: I have been listening to your shows -- you talk about adding an external drive for backup -- however -- shouldn't a back up copy be offsite incase of a fire, flood, etc? Can you backup the WHS to an offsite service like Moxy or Carobonite for added security? Just seems to make sense. Thanks for your thoughts Hi James, Thanks for listening. The external backup option in PP1 is absolutely meant to be taken offsite. That's why there is not a scheduling option for this backup. I'm not sure about Moxy or Carobonite but there is an add-in called Jungle Disk that performs offsite backups. I think there will be more support for off-site file transfer in the future. I also think there will be Add-In development geared towards automating the external share backup.

Allen wrote: I would like to hear something on these low cost HDD vs. failures when used in a WHS. Ex: I bought two new WD Scorpio 120GB drives for my ThinkPad business notebook. I use two because I clone one to the other using Casper every week in case C: fails, I can be back up in ten minutes. Well, nine months after purchase, C: drive started making bad bearing noises and I replaced it under warranty. And I was back up in ten minutes after a drive swap. I heard Steve Gibson grc.com say that he was building a new PC and he bought four Hitachi 1TB server grade HDD's. I understand HP uses server class 2.5 inch HDD's in their rack mount business servers. Question: should we be buying server class HDD's for use in our WHS or not? Makes sense to me but what do they cost and how do you find them?

Hi David, I have a question regarding the data corruption bug. I installed my home server in late May before the PP1 release. The PC I used was my old desktop PC that had 4 drives; 400Gb, 200Gb and 2x160Gb drives. I had all my personal data on that machine and used SyncToy to keep a copy of my photos, music and docs on more than one physical drive. This process was getting increasingly complicated so that's why I decided to move to WHS. * Migration - pre WHS install. When I decided to install WHS I purchased 2 x 1 TB drives so I could swap out my 160Gb drives. In order to transfer my data I first took out one 160Gb drive and attached the 1Tb drive. I then moved all my photos, music and docs to the 1Tb disk from my old 200Gb, 400Gb and 160Gb drive using SyncToy. I then remove the 1 TB drive. * WHS Install For the actual WHS installation I just kept the 400Gb drive in the machine and installed WHS. Once WHS was up and running I added my 2nd brand new 1Tb drive and added this drive to the WHS storage pool. Then I added my 1st 1TB drive with all my data but did not add it to the storage pool. Using SyncToy 2.0 on the WHS I copied data from my E: (1st 1TB) drive to drive letters mapped to my WHS shares for Music, Photo, Docs etc. It all appears to have gone fine. Once the data had transferred I added my 1st 1TB drive to the storage pool, wiped the data on it and then I enabled share duplication on my server. Knowing about the data corruption bug I did not use any client PCs to actually read, write to files on my WHS shares. * Summary So to make the question short - when I transferred data using SyncToy 2.0 to a WHS with multiple drives (400Gb and 1Tb) did I set my self up to be hit my the data corruption bug? Would folder duplication in itself be a cause for the data corruption bug? Is there any tool I can use to verify that none of my files are actually affected by the bug? I mean if I can read my mp3 tags then the mp3 files should be ok, if the jpgs from my camera meta data can be read the file should be ok and so forth. Finally if you do think that there could be a risk of some of the files being corrupted then I have a way to restore the data as I transferred much of the data onto a laptop and ran a backup from the laptop to the WHS. Have any WHS backups ever been affected by the data corruption bug? Sorry for this long and complicated question, but any tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for a great show - Chr

Hi Dave - I still have my EX475 sitting the the box and plan to do the installation this weekend. Do you have any tips for me from a setup standpoint? I would set I up with only one PC only to begin with. Basic settings, one user, one computer, no duplication, turned on, don’t worry about remote right now. Don’t install any add-ins. Some may differ with me on this part, but I would do a Manual backup of this PC right now. Sit and wait it out. Verify that the backup runs. This tests the server and the connector. Open the backup and view the files inside it. Also, test by opening the console and browsing the WHS console. On your desktop there is a Shortcut to Shared folders on Server. Open, transfer a few files to a share. Everything should be working fine out of the box but this will verify. After this backup and connector verification, open WHS console, click Settings, and Hardware Status. Screen capture (Alt-Print Screen) this box and paste into Word or Paint. We want to capture your fan speeds and temps after you have done the backup. We are “base lining” your server at this point. If ever there should be a question about temperature or voltage we have a good screen capture to refer back to. Next, updates. The big question seems to be should you do the HP updates and then PP1 or install PP1 first? HP has other updates that are beneficial. I have done a customer install where the HP Update was present and I installed PP1 after with no problems whatsoever. I would go into the console and click the MSS button on the left side and check for updates. Does the April HP update with McAfee and PVConnect include the other updates? I’m not sure on that. I would update this way and do the same thing on the PC you just installed the connector on. Vista, Click run, type HP Update. Or there is an HP folder under Start. This will do updates on the client side. Do this several times on the server and client until it comes back with no available updates. The HP update with McAfee will make your Network Health turn orange. Disregard this and don’t install McAfee or PVConnect at this point. Fresh reboots on both. Download PP1 from your workstation. Transfer it to a shared folder, RDP into your server, move it to desktop. Double-click it. Do as it says. At your workstation upgrade the connector. In a browser - http://servername:55000 Install the rest of your workstations. If you have not been using WHS read through the welcome documentation before making any changes. Verify the backup schedule is what fits your household. Times, etc. Verify the next day that the unattended backup ran Ok. Purchase hard drives. Buy what you can afford. I wouldn’t put anything under a 500GB drive in but that’s my preference. If you have smaller SATA drives to put in go ahead but leave one slot open. When you buy a big drive put it in and then you will have room to remove the smaller drives. When you do remove the smaller drive it will have plenty of room on that big drive. Consider purchasing an external drive that is very large. Large enough to hold all your data that you will transfer to it. Transfer your files to your shares. Think about how your household access files and folders before you transfer data. I make my WHS the central repository for all my data files, photos, videos, etc. If you have a lot of data it may take a while. Before you transfer your files to WHS make sure you have a backup of them. If WHS has done a backup of your machine verify that you can find those files on a backup. Not for fear of losing data but just as a precaution. If your files are on an external drive attached to your machine and it’s not formatted as NTFS, WHS will not back up that external drive. So in essence, you will only have one copy of those files. I wouldn’t transfer until you have multiple drives in the WHS. After the file transfer, turn on Shared Folder Duplication via the WHS console. Before installing Add-Ins read every blog on my blogroll about the Add-in. This includes PVConnect and McAfee. If you’re not sure you need the Add-in chances are you probably don’t. Read before you test on your own server. Someone out there has already tested for you! Setup Remote Access if you need it. In WHS Console click Settings, Remote Access. Don’t forget your HP MSS other features. Photo sharing, Streaming audio, video. Don’t try to do it all in one night. It’s going to take time so enjoy the process. Best part…..Enjoy your HP MSS and use it’s features that take it beyond a backup device.

The server/enterprise drives tend to be more resilient, but that is because the performance on these guys are not as good as a desktop PC, but in a Home Server, this doesn't matter as much. :)

David, the data corruption bug is now a thing of the past as long as you have PP1 installed. On top of that, check out what it actually was. The majority of folks just assumed what it was.