Home Server Recovery

I finally got around to testing the recovery on my new home server this past week and have to say it was a good news - bad news situation. The good news is that the backup worked and we finally did get it restored. The bad news is that it wasn't quite as simple as I would have liked it to be. I happen to use an HP 4200 tablet as my machine of choice. In fact, I have actually got 2 of them by design so I can move hard drives if something should happen to it. I really like the little machine - light and easy to carry - works great for me on the road. I have had my share of hard drive failures in it but since I have started treating the drives with a little more care that problem has not been nearly as severe as it had been prior. So I had an extra hdd that had been returned to me after a warranty repair and I was ready to test the home server recovery.

We installed the drive and tried to go through the recovery steps - blue screen. After some research on the web we discovered that the 4200 tablet is a bit of a problem for some reason for recovery. We tried a few of the suggestions but it just didn't work. So we finally put the drive in another notebook, ran the recovery, put it into the 4200 and viola - it came up as expected. So the backup really does work. The recovery may take a little finese but it really did work as advertised. I am really a believer that this product has a place in many of our solution sets for the executive. Traditional backup recovery is far slower and more difficult than from the Home server. And it just works in the background every day doing it's thing. In our home, I have my machines and my chief executive (my wife Nancy's) in the backup loop. Having lost three hard drives myself the last six months - this really is a strong solution. It may have a few rough edges yet to be worked out, but I am pumped by the backup solution it provides, let alone the other features I am only beginning to test now. If you haven't taken a look - you need to.

Some of this functionality is bound to spill into upcoming versions of Cougar and EBS, maybe even Windows server. Good days are ahead for us in protecting our customers data. But for now, you can protect up to 10 machines in your office with a great backup solution for those who never quite seem to get around to it and they don't even have to know about it. Plus it monitors their security settings and updates to be sure those are updated too. Check it out!