Windows Home Server Broke Until Summer

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

Although Windows Vista wasn't as widely accepted as Microsoft would have hoped, their Windows Home Server was anticipated all the way up to it's release. We first took a look at the OS last spring and were pleased overall with what we saw. But, now that the OS is in the hands of many, vicious bugs are beginning to arise, and the one of main concern is ridiculous.

Thanks to an underlying issue which cannot be easily fixed, data corruption can occur, deeming the files useless. One experience related at DailyTech proves just how destructive the bug can be. Tim Slocum had well over 16,000 family photos on the machine, and all were corrupted within a few weeks of use. He decided to start over, deploying a basic OS install without the extras. Again, like the first time, the files were corrupted within a few days.

I am not sure of the details of the bug itself, but for an OS to be released with such a blatant and destructive bug is incredible. How it was not caught in QA is anyone's guess, but this bug alone should cause anyone who was considering WHS to reconsider their purchase, at least for now. The bug should be ironed out this summer.

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Now Microsoft says the problem is that the underpinnings of WHS are broken, and that a fix is required at a very low level. This will take a good deal of time to develop and validate, according to the WHS Team at Microsoft. The WHS Team hopes to release beta versions of a patch over following months, but states that June is the soonest a finished patch might appear.

Source: DailyTech
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[b1lk1]

Interesting read. To think I was one mouse click away from that OS about 2 months ago too.......

 

[Rob Williams]

Hah. The bad thing is that it's NOT a bad OS... but this bug sure doesn't help a damn thing.

 

[b1lk1]

I really want to build a personal home server with this OS. I tried in vain for 3 weeks to get a Linux home server setup and it is just far too difficult for a relatively new Linux user. I'm keeping my eye on this with the hopes of it being fixed by summertime.

 

[Rob Williams]

Networking in general is a pain in the ass, but in Linux it can be a little more difficult. It depends on the distro though... some will make the task a lot easier than others.

I wish I had recommendations, but I don't, haha. I have never had the need to deal with a network (I connect to my Windows machine fine with Samba and from my Windows machine to Linux with SSH) so I am not that knowledge on how to set up a proper network.

NAS boxes come in handy in certain cases though. If I need something on the Windows machine or vice-versa, it's just as easy to copy it to the NAS first and then off the NAS on the other machine.

For Windows users though, I think WHS is a great OS because of the advanced backup tool. Well, you know, once this bug is taken care of at least...