Home System Backup in a Windows World

The console has a toolbar at the top with five tabs: Computers & Backup, User Accounts, Shared Folders, Server Storage and Network. There are smaller links at the far right for Settings and Help. Menu options for each tab appear underneath the toolbar. When the console opens, the Computers & Backup tab is selected as the default and the available menu options are View Backups, Backup Now, Configure Backup and Remove Computer. In the bottom pane, all the machines that have Home Server Connector installed are listed. Each computer has a field for description, operating system, and status. Since this is the first time accessing the console, this machine's status would most likely be, "Not yet backed up."

The Network tab indicates the home network. If there are any problems, such as requiring new updates or a problem with network connectivity, the tab will change colors. Otherwise, it will have a white check on a green shield and read, "Healthy." All issues should be resolved immediately to prevent any backup delays or problems.

Since the Home Server currently has no users, engineers decided to create some before looking at the backup job.

5. Create User Accounts: Clicking on the User Accounts tab open up a list of all the users who have access to the server. By default, Windows Home Server creates, but disables, a guest account. Clicking on "Add" in the sub-toolbar brings up a dialog box to create a user account. Windows Home Server recommends the log-ons match the user accounts that already exist on the client machine. Having matching log-on names make it easier to access shared folders. It's not required, however. It just means that the server would prompt for a username and password when accessing the server.

Remote access is granted on an individual user basis and can be granted during user creation. It can be turned on or off at any time by going into the Properties menu option for that user. Each user can also be granted varying levels of access (full, read, none) to various folders on the server.

Engineers changed a few settings that apply to all backups.

6. Changing the default backup settings: When the server created the backup job, it set the backup window to the default time, or from midnight to 6:00 AM. This can be changed to a more convenient time, or to a smaller window. From the main tool bar, clicking on Settings opens up a two-paned window. In the navigation pane, select Backup to access backup-specific options. The details pane shows three options: Backup Time, Automatic Backup Management, and Backup Cleanup.

The start time and end time for the backup window can be set under Backup Time. If there are multiple machines in the network configured for backup, they will run one at a time, sequentially. Any machines not backed up during the backup window will go first in the next backup cycle. However, since each backup will run to completion, if the backup window ends halfway through a job, that job will continue to run. To start an automatic backup, the machine must be on, in sleep or hibernate mode, or in the case of a laptop, be plugged in. Battery-powered laptops will not start an automatic backup.

Performing daily backups of all the computers can add up over time. To manage how long the backups should be kept, Windows Home Server uses Automatic Backup Management. In the details pane, there are three settings that determine how many backups to keep: the number of months to keep the first backup of the month, number of weeks to keep the first backup of the week, and number of days to keep the first backup of the day.

The final option, Backup Cleanup is an automatic process that deletes old backup files. All backup data considered too old by Automatic Backup Management is deleted during the backup window on Sunday. It can be run manually from this pane.

And now, back to Computers & Backup to tweak the individual backup jobs.

7. Specifying what to backup: By default, the job is created to backup the entire computer. Perhaps the backup should focus only on data and not application files or system files. By right clicking on the machine name or selecting Configure Backup from the menu, a wizard opens, listing all the drives that are attached to the local machine. Since Windows Home Server supports only NTFS volumes, all FAT32 drives in the machine will be ignored. Select the drives to backup.

The next screen lists items that are excluded from the backup. By default, Windows Home Server won't back up cache files, temporary files, system paging and hibernation files, or data in the Recycle bin. To restrict the backup even further, click on the "Add" button. A window will open with the directory tree. Folders that should be excluded from the backup are selected individually. The chosen folders join the defaults in the exclusion list. Once all the directories to exclude have been selected, Windows Home Server displays a summary page of the job that indicates the number of volumes to backup, the number of folders that were excluded and an estimated size for the entire backup.

NEXT: The nitty-gritty of backup