Messing around I managed to wipe out one of my machines. Fortunately, I have rock solid backups with Windows Home Server, which I highly recommend. When disaster strikes, all you need to do is pop in the WHS Restore CD, follow the prompts, and you’re computer comes magically back to life. It truly is that easy.
Having restored machines before, I was on autopilot when I started the restore and was surprised to see that the Restore CD reported that I didn’t have a network card. Oh right, the machine I was restoring has an Intel network card that requires a driver that’s not part of the normal Windows install. No big deal, I opened up my latest backup for the machine and copied the “Windows Home Server Drivers for Restore” directory to a USB key. After telling the Restore to scan my USB key, it didn’t find the network drivers. Without network drivers, you don’t get a restore. I got a different USB key and copied the directory to it. A rescan still didn’t report the network drivers.
I looked at the drivers on the USB key and they were definitely there. There was no way that WHS could fail me! It always worked before. After years of struggling with backups and finally finding a great solution, I was about to panic.
A little bit of web surfing later, I had the DOH! moment. The machine I was restoring had an x64 operating system on it. The Restore CD is a 32-bit version and obviously can’t load the x64 drivers. Downloading the Intel network drivers, I threw the 32-bit drivers onto the USB key and rescanned. If you’re not sure what to put on the USB drive, copy everything from your vendor over. The Restore CD recursively searches for the right .CAT and .INF files so you don’t have to pick through the vendor’s files.
Thirty minutes later, my machine was back exactly where it was at the last backup. Windows Home Server completely rocks! If you aren’t using it, how can you sleep at night?
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I cannot agree with you more. WHS is a great backup solution because it is transparent in operation and goes unnoticed until you need it.
Sleeping well at night.
Rick
Don't overlook the build-in image-based backup available in the better SKU's of Vista and Win7. It took me less than 10 minutes to recover a machine when replacing a hard drive using nothing more than the tools that come with Vista/7 Ultimate edition. The differences from WHS are that:
- I had to setup network storage location for the images
- I created a scheduled task to light-off the backups since the built-in tools backup way too often for me (I like weekly for an entire computer image; plenty often for me).
- My images are all completely separate per machine; I think WHS does something special here to optimize what is actually stored so that the same file(s) on different machines are only backed up once.
Other than that, it's the same stuff and built-into the OS.
I have noticed that:
+ Many people do not have the capable SKUs and are therefore unaware of the feature
+ Many people don't trust it.
Well, take it from me - you can trust it. I have 7 machines in the house, all with image backups. I have recovered a notebook, desktop, and my single domain controller (what a trip that last one was!).
Now, I'm not going to compare the simplicity of WHS to manually doing things, yourself. But I am amazed at how few people know the capabilities built right into their OS.
I'm sold, but how would the average person have gotten themselves out of that predicament? Maybe part of Windows driver installation process should require all 64 bit drivers to also include the 32 bit counterpart? I'm also surprised by the fact that Windows 7 still lacks some built-in drivers for some very common components. For example, they should probably support every Linksys and Intel product by now, don't you think?
On my post about restoring with Windows Home Server, Bill Tudor had an excellent comment that I felt
Josh,
I agree that Microsoft should require both 64 and 32-bit drivers from all vendors. In the case with WHS, I think the issue was that the WHS backup only saves off the machine's drivers in use.
To give Windows credit, it does include most of the common drivers these days, even for laptops. I'm sure with the RTM and Windows Update, we'll have nearly everything pretty soon.
- John Robbins
Yeah the built-in driver situation is definitely better now than it used to be. But the ones that seem to always get missed are the ones I need to download the drivers! LOL
I have also found that windows does include most of the drivers - still it would be nice if they required both 32 and 64-bit from their vendors, as well as become more aggressive getting them to develop their apps for 64-Bit. I know some small businesses that would jump all over Windows Home Server if they weren't limited to a 64-Bit OS.
This WHS Blog was invaluable to solving my restore problem. After multiple instances of not finding the network drivers as John originally states, I was extremely frustrated. I put multiple copies of the network drivers on a USB drive to no avail. After reading and implementing John's thoughts on adding the 32 bit drivers, the restore performed flawlessly.
I am sorry that you had to go through the pain, but very glad that you took the time to post this response.
i like it too, only it sucks when you have macs and linux machines too. I haven't found a good way to backup these to whs
I have an environment where I want to backup an HP ML150 (or similar) server. The server has server based raid controller drivers. ie for server 2003 or server 2008. eg. there are no Windows7 or vista raid drivers for an HP e200 raid controller. So backing up the server using WHS works a treat. But how to restore it, as the restore CD cant find the raid drivers. ( I have tried loading the server 2003 and the server 2008 32 drivers without success). I am considering building a Bart PE boot CD using Server 2003 files, then running the restorecdinit.exe file. I would appreciate any thoughts on this strategy. BTW this may solve some of the 64 bit driver issues.
David J