Tranquil PC's Weblog

How safe is your Home Server ?

For sure, your Home Server ‘data’ – the important stuff, is safe as long as you have more than one Hard Disk Drive (HDD) fitted to your Home Server, and folder duplication is enabled.  Tranquil will always recommend at least two HDDs are always used on Home Servers, unless you use off site backup services too.

Also the primary HDD containing the Operating System (OS) partition is safe, due to the simple way that a Home Server can be ‘Restored’ over the network (another great solution from the Microsoft Home Server team) even if the HDD fails (physically).

However, due to the nature of the Restore process, certain things are lost – ALL the DATA can be recovered safely from any Duplicated Folders, but any specific user settings / folder access permissions etc and installed Add Ins / application software installed on the Home Server is lost.  This is not often a problem to the home user, but in a small business environment (where down time / rebuilding would cause an problem) it may be critical.

Tranquil R&D team have agonised over how to create / supply a hardened Home Server product – ie one that is as ‘SAFE’ as possible, safe from ALL HDD failure, even protecting the Primary HDD.  This short series will explain the issues, the opportunities, and the final solution – the “Safe Home Server”.

Watch this series as we build the world’s first OEM ‘Safe Home Server’

Next – The Home Server Drive Extender (DE) – how it works, why it’s great, but how it makes it currently impossible to develop an ‘image’ based ‘Safe Home Server’.