Windows Home Server Review

Everton | Dec 09, 2007 | View Comments


Computers & Backup

Within Computers & Backup you can see the status of all PCs that have the WHS Connector software installed.

The online status of each PC is displayed on the summary page, as well as whether an up-to-date backup has been completed. Users can configure how long the monthly, weekly and daily backups are kept for and whether each machine is backed up manually or automatically.

WHS Computers & Backup Tab

The backup service works very well and once the main backup has been done, the daily updates take around a minute to run. The way that backups are conducted is very smart so that common files within backups are only backed up once to save space e.g. backing up 3 of my PCs only takes up 11GB of storage in total.

User Accounts

The user account tab allows you to create accounts for friends, family and guests. Configuring the accounts to control what folders on the server can be accessed and whether or not the user can access the server remotely, is very easy. If remote access is added to an account then a strong password is required by WHS.

WHS User Accounts

The remote access facility within WHS is excellent. Once remote access is enabled, WHS automatically keeps the server available over the web via a xxxx.homeserver.com domain that the user selects. I was lucky enough to get in early enough to get a fantastic domain which is now tied to my Windows Live ID. Via remote access the server be configured and all the shared folders accessed all via a browser, and all PCs that are connected can also be controlled.

WHS RAS HomeWHS RAS 3WHS RAS 4

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About the Author: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day.

  • @MichaelQ

    The Mac will be able to see all the shared folders as they are just network shares so yes. Backup works as you can backup the Mac to one of the shares. Also streaming as it's based on UPnP
  • MichaelQ
    Perhaps this may be a silly question, but:

    Can you put a Mac on a WHS network? Would you get all the advantages? (i.e. shared folders, streaming, back up [with Time Machine], etc?

    How would you set this up?

    Thanks for any help!
  • Where in the world can you buy a PC that ships default with a 40gb hard drive? I didn't even know they made those anymore...
  • idlorj
    The system drive is a 20GB partition. On my WHS I have 14.9GB free out of the 20.
  • WHS is Slow
    WHS speeds can drop to as bad as between 1Mbits/s to 7Mbits/s which as you can imagine may disappoint you heavily especially if your on a 1 Gigabit network!

    Source: on10.net/Blogs/EnglishBloke/how-can-i-speed-up-my-windows-home-server-file-copies
  • fenix
    Yeah, WHS is one of the best recent MS releases, especially after the mixed reaction to Vista. The close collaboration of MS with third party vendors means that those programs ought to work right out of the box and integrate nicely into WHS. For eg, Diskeeper, and excellent defragmenter in it's own right snaps right into the WHS console, and makes defragging very easy and painless. Overall, an excellent effort by MS and I hope this carries over to Vienna/7/whatever the next version of Windows is called.
  • Jez
    waiting for my $5 120 day trial disk now! this 'should' hopefully solve most of my issues! Hope there is a good community for addins..
  • Considering that many PCs ship with 40GB by default, this 20GB screams "Im bloatware"

    Sigh. It's like software vendors and hardware vendors are in cahoots to make us spend on bigger, faster and nastier upgrades
  • @Jalaj

    The installation of WHS uses up 20GB - you can see my storage breakdown in bottom right of the first screenhot - http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/wp-content/u...

  • (WHS itself only takes up about 20GB)


    Is that a typo... 20GB ?
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