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Serious Windows Home Server concerns [Updated]

Dec. 22, 2007 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

As is the case with my problems with the Xbox 360's Fall 2007 Dashboard Update, where I am having many issues that no one else seems to be having, I'm sort of hoping that what I'm seeing on Windows Home Server (WHS) lately is just me. But I'm concerned enough about these issues to at least just throw them out there and see what happens.

Here's what's up.

First, I've literally just completed my switch-over to WHS and have taken down my previous Windows Server 2003-based server. I'm using HP's Media Smart Server and have added two 512 GB drives for a total of 2 TB of storage. I really only need 1 TB but I do use WHS's data duplication functionality extensively, so what the heck. Plus it's backing up several PCs regularly. The point of all this is that I'm really using this thing. It's not a best test or an experiment. My data is all on this server.

The HP has had a troubling number of hard drive corruption issues. These issues seem to be occurring mostly on a single disk, but that's not necessarily true, so I will keep watching this. Occasionally, I will logon to Vista in the morning, see a red WHS icon and click it to discover that something's wrong with a hard disk. WHS lets you repair these problems, and it takes a long time but always seems to work. I don't have any offsite backup so this is troubling. I am experimenting with backing up to my old Firewire 800-based BiggerDisks over the network, but it's slow, and if the WHS-based data is corrupted, I'm screwed anyway.

I'm not sure if it's my router or my home server, but three times now I've gotten an alert that the remote access feature had stopped working. Just navigating to the Remote Access tab of the Settings dialog triggers a re-configuration, and that does work each time. But what if I'm away when this stops working and thus can't access my files remotely? It sort of renders the feature moot, doesn't it?

Now, I see this scary little Microsoft knowledge base article (When you use certain programs to edit files on a home computer that uses Windows Home Server, the files may become corrupted when you save them to the home server). As you might imagine, I use several of those applications. All my data is stored on the home server. Are you seriously telling me that my personal photo collection might be corrupt, Microsoft? Really? Sorry. But this is scary. Really scary.

Is this stuff doesn't freak you out, it should. It freaks me out. I really, really like WHS and the HP MediaSmart Server specifically. But I've got this growing concern about these products, and I just need to communicate it. Is anyone else having any WHS issues? Is it just me?

Update: There's also this WHS-related KB: Data files that contain NTFS alternate data streams can be corrupted on a Windows Home Server-based computer. This is related to the previous KB in that applications like Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Live Gallery are among those that use NTFS alternate data streams. Apparently, WHS has no idea how to deal with these kinds of files, which can lead to corruption.

Discuss this Article 23

shussey
on Dec 22, 2007
I have had only one hard drive corruption with a successful repair, but I traced the majority of the off line occurrences to my Linksys WRT54G Version 5 Wireless Broadband router. The problem has not occurred since I update the firmware from Version 1.0 about 2 weeks ago. Sometimes connectivity could be restored through the Home Server Utility and sometimes I had to reset the router itself. This was initially happening every couple of days.
clindhartsen
on Dec 22, 2007
My question here is, why isn't Microsoft making their OWN software work with their OWN server? Did they never experiment with this in their own labs or something?
rickhuizinga
on Dec 22, 2007
I have been experiencing the file corruption issue with MS Money & MS OneNote files. I had a catastrophic loss of all of my personal financial information for the last number of years, including records of all payments made to vendors on a home remodel project . This was disconcerting, especially due to the unscrupulous nature of many contractors. I thought all was lost, but then WHS saved me as I realized I had daily backups of the file from the previous day and before. (I had just experimented with moving my Documents folder onto WHS, and the MS Money corruption issue hit me the very first day.) I have also had the file corruption issue with MS OneNote files. MS OneNotes corruption recovery features helped save much of this data, but I have lost a few notes over time. I recently moved my OneNote file store/share onto my Media Center server as this machine is also on 24x7. Over the past year, I've been let down with the quality control on some of the products that MS has released. I have been using Vista Media Center with digital cable tuner support since the beginning of April (when the first cable card PC's shipped) and have had numerous issues using it with XBox 360 media center extenders. Only recently (I think the November media center rollup release) have all the issues been resolved. I have no doubt that MS will fix the file corruption issues (outlined in the KB article), but basic issues such as file system corruption should not be present in a released (gold) version of an operating system.
DRWAM
on Dec 22, 2007
Do not rule out hardware failure. I was repairing and reformatting my spare WD 180GB drive on several times on multiple computers [XP and Mac OS] and kept getting corrupted files and ultimately drive failures. I finally checked the S.M.A.R.T. status only to see 'failing'. I lost a boat load of old files, hopefully so old that they were backed up or useless. Good luck men. I like when I solve the issues, but hate the frustration. There's always St. Jude [patron saint of hopeless causes].
dmiannay
on Dec 22, 2007
I've been running WHS now for almost a month. I have two desktops and a laptop being backed up daily and everything has been working just fine to-date. I have two 500GB drives, two 320GB drives and a single 500GB external drive for a total of just over 2TB of storage space. I duplicate many of my files and so far have not had any problems. I have read about these issues and I too am quite concerned since I don't have my data backed up anywhere alse at the moment. I think I'm going to remove the external 500GB drive for now and use it to keep an extra backup of my critical data until such time as these troubling reports are verified and corrected or prove to be wrong.
mmutham
on Dec 22, 2007
I have been experiencing the problems with remote connectivity as mentioned by Paul here. I wasn't sure if this was a problem with my linksys router or whs. It is very scary to know that files updated by onenote, photo gallery get corrupted. This also brings another scary thought what are the other applications that fall into the category,
dX
on Dec 22, 2007
Is guess its best not to edit files directly on a WHS file share, i suspect if you edit a file on the share which has duplication then save the file, then go and make a cup of tea - by the time you get back WHS - 'balancing storage' might moved the physical file to another drive hence problems with the way some applications manage files...
dX
on Dec 22, 2007
If you have problems with connectivity, then install and run the Windows Home Server Toolkit (http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2253939&SiteID=50\"). If you use any kind of weird DNS service like OpenDNS, then stop using it (make sure to ipconfig /flushdns on the admin command-line). OpenDNS is buggy and will resolve local network hostnames, including WHS to its own web servers, and cause other IP/Name mismatches.
kellymjones
on Dec 22, 2007
I'm with DRWAM, don't rule out hardware issues. So often we're used to software failing that we'll pound our head against the wall trying to fix it; when really it's a just a hardware issue.
daveinla
on Dec 22, 2007
Maybe there's a reason why Apple removed the wireless backup via Time machine at the last minute... there must some problem of reliability of wireless transfer via wifi... just a thought even if I'm no expert.
feralboy
on Dec 22, 2007
Daniel Escapa mentioned this problem on his OneNote blog as it pertains to OneNote. I will be keeping my OneNote files local for the time being. http://blogs.msdn.com/descapa/ Good luck.
Civisi
on Dec 23, 2007
Paul, Have you seen this? http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/dougknox/archive/2007/12/23/possible-da... It links to a MS KB article about file corruption on Home Server.
Civisi
on Dec 23, 2007
Doh! I didn't remember seeing the link to the KB article in the blog posting before. When I read it on Windows-Now.com, I immediately thought of you and hurriedly posted the link. Sorry for providing info you already know...
anonymous
on Dec 23, 2007
mbrose
on Dec 23, 2007
I saw the hard drive corruption issue quite a bit (probably once a week I had a volume that failed) while I was running the Eval version, but since I reinstalled after I purchased a copy, I have not seen that problem. I have also experienced file corruption with Quicken and QuickBooks. I had to move the data directories to local storage and just make backups to WHS. Even doing that, sometimes it corrupts the QuickBooks files (or at least it complains it can't duplicate them). The other problem I have seen is that even saving standard office files directly to the shared drive is extremely slow. Way slower than to my other W2k3 box, so I know it's not a networking issue. I wonder if this is what causes the file corruption issues. My guess is it has something to do with the way WHS is providing transparent access to multiple drives making them appear as one. There has to be some layer that was implemented to achieve this, and most likely this is the culprit.
pmcgrath
on Dec 23, 2007
It's interesting to note that the programs listed in the KB article use structured data files. Possible the fact that the files are open when the application is open and WHS is trying to balance data is causing the data corruption.
mderooij
on Dec 24, 2007
Gives one to think about the testing procedures used @ MS. Ah well, back to FreeNAS then ..
pthurrott
on Dec 24, 2007
Just a quick thanks for all the comments here. Hopefully, we'll hear something positive from MS soon. I will try to ping the WHS guys this week, but given the timing, it's unclear if anyone will be around.
DRWAM
on Dec 24, 2007
This may be what we all use at home in a few years. Who knows, maybe the WHserver will handle Macs and Linux too! I think that it is a real possibility, I just wanted to write it first here.
RunTimeError
on Dec 24, 2007
Wow. This is awesome. I was actually looking into WHS for the home network. Think I'll stick with my original plan of a Unix box instead.
daveinla
on Dec 24, 2007
Excuse for the total Noob question but what does a WHS box offer more than a good NAS like the excellent Buffalo LinkstationPro ??
DRWAM
on Dec 26, 2007
If this helps, I found this : Microsoft's Windows Home Server corrupts files 'Don't edit' list includes photos, as well as Quicken and QuickBooks files, warns Microsoft; no word on patch here is the link: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...
kdishman
on Dec 27, 2007
Add to this the fact that HP seems to have disabled the Shadow Copy feature on their MediaSmart servers. Found this out the hard way after accidentally deleting some files from a WHS share. Maybe Paul can ask his contacts at HP what's up with this...

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