The Windows Home Server Team is pleased to announce that Power Pack 3 will be available in all shipping languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish) on November 24^th, 2009. Power Pack 3 will be made available to existing users via Windows Update. Users need to have Windows Home Server with Power Pack 2 already installed on their home server. Power Pack 3 will automatically install as part of Windows Update if Automatic Updates is enabled on the home server.

As we’ve communicated in a past post, Power Pack 3 improves the Windows Home Server experience with Windows 7 and Windows Media Center by providing new features like: backup and restore of computers running Windows 7, Windows 7 Libraries integration, enhancements for Windows Media Center, and better support for netbook computers. Power Pack 3 will enable the most optimal experience for Windows 7 users on a Windows Home Server network.

“If you've recently upgraded to Windows 7, Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 is an essential download providing enhanced integration between the two platforms and a number of cool new features. Combine library support with enhanced features for Windows Media Center, and we're really starting to see Microsoft bring together the Windows Home Server and Windows 7 client experience so that your media can be stored on your home server and enjoyed seamlessly on TV, PC and Mobile devices with little effort from the user. The bad old days of copy, paste, convert and transcode may well be behind us,” says Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) Terry Walsh of We Got Served.

Microsoft MVP Alex Kuretz of MediaSmartServer.net says “Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 makes storing and accessing your media easier by bringing all the content contained on your Home Server smoothly into your Windows 7 libraries. TV Archive is also a very nice feature that has allowed me to record TV shows and move them to my Home Server to be watched at a later time.”

Here are some details on what’s new:

Windows 7 Libraries integration

When you install the Windows Home Server Connector and log on a computer running Windows 7, you can access the Windows Home Server shared folders from the Windows 7 libraries.

Windows 7 Action Center backup warning suppression

After you install the Windows Home Server Connector to enable the home server backup for your computer running Windows 7, you can suppress the Action Center warning reminding you that Windows Backup has not been set up.

Windows 7 power settings

You can configure your computer running Windows 7 to wake up at a scheduled backup time and then go back to sleep after the backup finishes.

? Console support for Windows 7

Windows 7 is properly displayed as the operating system shown in the Computers & Backup tab.

Windows Search

Windows Search 4 is included to improve query search times, indexing times, and reliability. Extended Remote Discovery increases the efficiency of searching across all your libraries running Windows Search 4. Files encrypted with EFS are now supported.

TV archive

Windows Home Server can automatically archive recorded TV by moving your recordings from a Windows Media Center computer to your home server in the format of your choice. This enables playback in the correct format for your home computers and/or portable devices.

Console view

You can view information about your home server’s storage space, hard drives, backup status, and more from Windows Media Center.

Complete details are available in the Power Pack 3 Release Documentation.

We want to thank our community for all of their testing and feedback over these past months with the Power Pack 3 Beta. You validated that Power Pack 3 was ready for release. We like to think that we are building this product together – as a passionate community.

- The Windows Home Server Team

Many people today have rescued their important documents and media by using Windows Home Server’s backup and restore capabilities. One man claims that Windows Home Server even saved his marriage.

Hopefully, by now you have read our Top 10 list for the reasons you should use Windows Home Server. Now, I will be telling you a little bit more about each point, and we are going to start with the most commonly used features, Backup and Restore.

The prospect of losing or damaging your precious possessions is terrifying. Today, a lot of those possessions are digital, such as your irreplaceable pictures. In general, we do our best to protect those items by occasionally backing up our computers, but shouldn’t something that important be looked after better? For total peace of mind, Windows Home Server does a complete image-based backup automatically everyday.

With Windows Home Server's data recovery capabilities, you can bring back individual files or folders. You can even recover a PC that's had an unfortunate accident or hard drive failure because Windows Home Server makes a copy of the entire contents of your home computer’s hard drive. Scott Hanselman is one of the many people that have used this feature, and he claims that it was so successful, it saved his marriage. In this post , Scott Hanselman writes about how he saved the day when his wife’s PC had a hard drive get smashed in by their 2-year old son. Windows Home Server is known for its speed when going through the restore process, and Scott is a true testament to that claiming “I hit Finish and it took like 11 minutes (creepy fast) to restore”. In no time, he had his wife’s PC fully restored and running like normal.

 

Scott’s story is only one among many others. One member of the Windows Home Server team asked the public to tell him their stories of how their Windows Home Server has “saved their lives”. Hundreds of people responded to this post, along with enthusiastically talking about how much they love having a Home Server.

Some highlighted quotes from this forum include:

• “I also had a very easy time setting up Windows Home Server and it just works".
• “After about an hour or so, I went and watched TV while this was running, I was back in business.  This definitely saved me time in rebuilding the laptop, without Windows Home Server it would have been 8 hours of rebuilding the OS and reinstalling all of my applications.”
• “This has to be one of Microsoft's best products that have come down the line.”
• “Windows Home Server saved me from a fairly ugly Saturday night and Sunday rebuilding my workstation.”
• “I actually don't have a bad thing to say about it, great product.”

If you are interested in learning more about Windows Home Server and it’s backup and restore capabilities, HP has created a "How To" video where you can watch an HP MediaSmart Server protect your files.

For further information, you can also visit www.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver.

You may have been hearing a lot about Windows Home Server recently, so now you are asking, why should I buy one, and what benefits will I get out of it? Well, to help you answer those important questions, the Windows Home Server team has come up with the Top 10 reasons to use this product! In this post, you can read a brief overview of each item, but check back soon because we will be taking a closer look at each point, along with how Windows Home Server has already helped thousands of people.

1. Image-based backup

Rest easy and know that your irreplaceable videos and pictures are always safe since Windows Home Server automatically backs up your entire computer on a daily basis.

2. Restore 

If catastrophe strikes, Windows Home Server has simple and fast data recovery with a restore feature for single files or entire hard drives that have failed.

3. Monitor

Windows Home Server will monitor the health status of your home network and immediately alert you if there is a problem.

4. Centralize

Windows Home Server stores your digital memories in a central location so you can access what you want from any computer on the network and save time by having all your things in one place.

5. Storage

With Windows Home Server, storage space grows as your needs grow. You are able to add internal or external hard drives of any size so that you can have an unlimited amount of storage space for HD movies, or your home videos.

 

6. User accounts

Windows Home Server allows you to create up to 10 user accounts. To increase protection, you can change the Shared Folders that users have access to, and enable remote access for each user.

7. Remote Access

When you are out of your home or office, Windows Home Server has remote access capabilities that make it possible for you to view, find files, and even use applications.

8. Stream media

Windows Home Server enables you to view, listen, and watch your videos, movies, and picture slideshows through playback devices such as Xbox 360.

9. Fully Expandable

Windows Home Server add-in programs can enhance and extend your home server's capabilities.  There are already over 100 add-ins available for download.

10. Easy to use

An uncomplicated, self-explanatory installation process for Window Home Server will have you up and running with minimum time and effort.

Hopefully, you are now ready to buy your very own Windows Home Server and start organizing, protecting, and sharing all of your digital experiences!

-Nicole

Since Windows Home Server is a new addition to The Windows Blog, we thought it would be a good idea to give everyone a refresh on what exactly Windows Home Server is and what it can do for you.

 

Windows Home Server was designed for households and home-based offices that have more than one personal computer. It was created to help you simplify your digital life, and provide an easy way to access your media and files from any computer, inside or outside your home. The leading benefits of Windows Home Server will help you “Share, Protect, Organize, and Grow” all of your digital content on up to 10 PCs through three basic services. These include automatic PC back-up, restoration ; document and file sharing ; and remote access capabilities. Windows Home Server software will typically be sold with new server hardware from companies like Acer and HP.

The great news about this product is that you don’t have to be computer savvy to set it up or to use it. To get your home server up and running, it only takes three easy steps: plug in the power, connect an Ethernet cord, and install the Windows Home Server connector software.

Starting to sound pretty cool? Let’s take a closer look at each of these features.

Organize:

Let’s pretend that you just got back from an amazing vacation and uploaded all of your new photos to one of your home PCs. Now, your family is over and wanting to see them, but you forgot which computer and folder you put them on. Instead of spending the time it takes to search through multiple locations, you could be using Windows Home Server and enjoying your picture slideshow. Windows Home Server provides an effortless way to organize and manage all of your media including the vacation pictures. After installation, a pre-defined set of shared folders will be shown: Photos, Music, and Videos. Windows Home Server will organize your family’s files and media, by storing them in one of the shared locations. Since all of these files will be stored in a central place, they can easily be found and accessed from any computer on your home or office network. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter which computer you put your pictures on since you can see them on any computer that is connected to your Home Server. Furthermore, if you enable user access, everyone on your network will have the ability to add and view media that is located in the Shared Folders.

*Organize devices

Protect:

I think we have all experienced the feeling of losing important files or pictures we love, and it is absolutely devastating. Everyone is aware that you should regularly back-up your computer in order to prevent loss of these valuable things. However, how often do you really find yourself doing it? With Windows Home Server, you will no longer need to run around your house with USB hard drives doing manual backups. Instead, Windows Home Server enables you to rest easy knowing that all of your irreplaceable videos and pictures are safe with Windows Home Server’s daily, automatic image based back-up and restoration feature.

 

The ability to restore individual files or even your entire computer is what makes backing up significant. Restoration can include accidentally deleted files (documents, music, pictures, videos), or complete computers. If your vacation pictures or crucial financial information accidentally get deleted, they will not be lost forever since you can restore to a previous point in time. You can also increase protection of certain files with Windows Home Server with since you have the ability to duplicate your shared folders. When you have more than one hard drive in your Home Server, your memories and files can then be stored and copied across multiple hard drives.

Share:

Windows Home Server helps families and small offices centralize and connect their digital experiences. It provides an easy and reliable way to store, access, and share whatever is most important through remote access. Like other features of Windows Home Server, remote access is fast and simple to use!

When using remote access, Windows Home Server lets you stay connected with friends and family. Once installed, your Home Server will automatically assign you an uncomplicated web address such as “yourname.homeserver.net”. You will then be able to share pictures, music, and documents through the password protected web address. From this site, you can upload media to the Shared Folders on your Home Server when using PCs that are not on your home network. This will give your friends and family the ability to log in through the personalized web address and download any pictures or files that you may have there. It is also simple to locate, view files, and even run applications from your home PC just as if you were sitting in front of that computer.

Grow:

With Windows Home Server, storage space grows as your digital life grows. The ability to increase the number of drives in your Home Server is one of the biggest innovations for Windows Home Server. You can very easily add internal or external hard drives of any size so that you will have an unlimited amount of storage for your collection of files, photos, and videos. Once you have two or more drives plugged in, the server will see this additional storage as one large drive instead of many individual drives. This will result in a much easier process when locating and storing files since you will only be searching through one virtual drive.

*Acer Aspire easyStore H-340

Your Home Server is also fully expandable meaning you have the option to download extra features to help customize your Home Server. The development community has created “add-ins” for Windows Home Server that extends its capabilities in fun, exciting, and useful ways. There are currently over 100 add-ins available for download including “Whiist” for photo sharing, and “Lights Out” for power conservation.

For more detailed information about Windows Home Server, check out the product guide at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/support.mspx.

To purchase and learn more about Windows Home Server, please visit www.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver.

- Nicole