What happens if my WHS boot disk or other hardware component failes? [closed]
I was boasting to some of my co-workers yesterday that my Windows Home Server (WHS) had my entire home network backed up and that is my recovery plan for a failed hard disk on one of the home computers.
I was then asked what I'd do if the boot hard disk failed on the (HP MediaSmart) WHS or if some other hardware component (such as the built in network card) failed. How do I recover from that?
I don't have an answer for that...
So my questions are:
- Can WHS duplicate its boot partition onto the other disks in the server? (If so, is this automatically done?)
- How do you recover if the boot partition fails?
- How do you recover if other hardware fails?
Solution 1:
As mentioned by Kevin, there is a manual process and an add-in to manage the data for connected PC backups: Backing Up Windows Home Server
Solution 2:
You can recover if the boot disk fails by reinstalling and re-discovering the existing data. This is fairly simple and straight forward.
What is more difficult is recovering the client system backups when the WHS fails. This is done by backing up (before failure) and recovering (after re-build) the WHS Backup Database. There are Add-Ins available for this that can be found at http://usingwindowshomeserver.com/ along with more detailed information about the recovery process.