Windows Home Server Deleted My Files!
The worst thing that could ever have happened to my Windows Home Server occurred yesterday - my personal files were deleted! I have no idea how this could have happened. I’m sure it wasn’t human error as I can’t see how I could have done it, as one file was left and I can’t see how I could have managed to delete all the other files and folders from my personal folder, but somehow managed to leave one behind.
I’ve been worrying a bit recently about how my all my files are all on one machine, and about what I would do if my Windows Home Server ever died. Although WHS offers a good backup solution for PCs connected to it, there’s no backup of the server itself. Luckily, none of the files I’ve lost are majorly important (I think!) and funnily enough the one that was saved is the only important one, and all my music, videos, DVDs etc that are stored in other folders all appear to still be there….
Duplicating important folders on WHS in case one of the drives go down isn’t good enough, especially in my situation where the actual files got deleted somehow. So, I’ve just installed JungleDisk that automatically backs up WHS to Amazon S3. The service only costs 15 cents per gigabyte, which is very cheap in my view. My 130GB backup is going to cost me £12 per month, which I think is a good price for an automated service - well worth it as I don’t want to risk losing my music, photos or files.
I’ll let you know what I think of the JungleDisk WHS service next week.
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Comment by Niro on 2 February 2008:
Hmmm this scares me he he.. Yea yea .. The whole world says windows is bad.. But I think its unfair. Anyhow I’m learning .NET now so have to take a windows server to host. He he.. will have to be careful right ? he he..Hmmm
Comment by jez on 2 February 2008:
Everton.. please try and find out why this happened, and let us all know… I havent got round to installing WHS yet but I was going to do it this month.
I was thinking of raiding my music and media, but backing up all files / photos / important docs somehow. Amazon S3 sounds like a good idea.
Comment by Everton on 2 February 2008:
@Jez
I have no idea. I have a suspicion now it might have been me as the file that survived might have been open at the time and that’s why it survived. I think I might have been able to recover all my files if I hadn’t rebooted, as there’s a way to see the previous versions of folders.
I didn’t lose anything vital - just some personal emails and my monthly budget planner, hence no MyBlogEarnings post for Jan as I’m not in the mood to re-create it. All my music is there, which to be honest is most important as I don’t fancy spending weeks reimporting it all.
I still recommend WHS - but get JungleDisk just in case a disk dies or something
Comment by Peter on 2 February 2008:
For all online backup and storage related info, I recommend this website:
http://www.BackupReview.info
Comment by guy on 4 February 2008:
Gee, WHS lost your files, which were backups of OTHER files, and you didn’t have duplication enabled, so now you only have ONE copy of your files?
Why don’t you go blog about it, then advertise your 3rd party solution for a problem that doesn’t exist?
Comment by Everton on 4 February 2008:
@guy
I keep all my files on the server, not backups, so I’ve lost the files.
Deleted the last bit of your comment, which may not surprise you…
Pingback by KeepVault Unlimited Backup Solution For Windows Home Server | Connected Internet on 15 February 2008:
[...] the backup system is not foolproof and it is still possible to lose files due to human error or hardware failure. Because of this for the last month or so, I have been using Jungle Disk which [...]
Comment by Larry on 23 March 2008:
I think you should have stayed with NASLite-2. It will be two years in April sine I started using it. No loss of files nor have I had any hastes with it.
Comment by Henry on 14 October 2008:
The same thing have just happened to me in a Windows XP 64 Bits Professional, I was just copying some large file from one partition to another, meanwhile I was deleting files in another partition, I selected 4 files, I’m totally sure, and as the recycle bin size is short I was requested to delete permanently those files, I accepted it because didn`t need them anymore, and the next thing I saw was that folder totally empty, I couldn’t believe it , closed and open explorer many times, searched in command prompt for those files, everything was useless. Finally I could recover some of them with an undelete program, (I think could’ve recovered all of them but used another undelete program first that recovered some of them with 0 bytes. They weren’t vital anyway, and I have my important files protected with DeepFreeze and backed up, but it’s kinda strange. I think Windows server and Windows XP 64 bits share simmiliarities because both were created with server purpose, can has this something to do?