Windows Home Server - Restoring It
6 August 2007In my earlier posts, I covered installing Windows Home Server and backing up a Windows XP installation to it. You can access them here and here.
In this post I’ll cover how you can restore your backup if your installation gets corrupted. For this purpose you need the following software:
- Windows Home Server RC - Home Computer Restore CD
This is present in the Windows Home Server package which you’ve downloaded earlier. Read my earlier post for more details.
Once you obtain the software proceed as follows.
Burn the CD Windows Home Server RC - Home Computer Restore CD.iso and boot the CD.
A dialog box displays the initialization process.
A dialog box named “Detect Hardware” will be displayed. Press Continue to proceed.
You’ll be asked to verify your hardware settings.
Make sure that your storage devices and network cards are detected. If either of them isn’t detected, press the button “Show Details”.
A dialog box will show the devices which have and haven’t been detected.
Press the button “Install Drivers”.
Note that before you attempt to install drivers, you should have copied your drivers from the Windows Home Server backup to a USB disk.
These are stored in the “Windows Home Server Drivers for Restore” folder on the Windows Home Server. You can access this folder by viewing your backup once you’ve made it. It is a essential that before you corrupt your installation, you should make a copy of the drivers. I have explained about this in my earlier post.
You’ll be asked to enter either a floppy or USB disk. Insert the disk and press the button “Scan”.
A dialog box displays that it has detected hardware which was previously not recognized. Now press OK to continue.
You can now see that the previously undetected network device is now detected.
Now press the “Continue” button.
A welcome screen will be displayed. Press Next to proceed
You’ll be asked to enter the Windows Home Server password. Enter the password and press Next.
You’ll be presented with a list of computers to restore. Select the name of your corrupted system and press Next.
A list of backups made will be displayed. Select the most appropriate(usually recent) one and press Next.
Select the source volume and destinaton volume to which you want to restore. If you are restoring on a corrupted system, then the partition will already be available, you just need to select the volume.
You can also use this procedure to restore on a new system to make a replica of the backup.
In this case you might need to create a NTFS partition. The Run Disk Manager(advanced)… button will help you to create one.
Press Next to continue.
You’ll be warned that existing files will be deleted. In this case you want to backup the whole volume,so press Next.
The restore process will begin. It’ll take a while before the volume gets restored.
It’ll finally display the dialog box that the volume has been restored from the backup.
Now press Finish.
The system will be restarted and you’ll boot into the newly restored working copy of your operating system.
Doesn’t that sound cool? You were able to restore your corrupted system over Network without much trouble.
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