One of the bigger flaws of Windows Home Server is the restore process. Not only do you have to rely on the router and other network hardware, but your experience can alo vary depending on the client computer. Even having the right drivers doesn’t mean that it will work all the time, that is, assuming you can even find the correct working drivers. It’s point of huge frustration for many.
Wouldn’t it be great to have the ability to connect a hard drive to the server and restore any computer to it? It’s just one of those things that would make Windows Home Server just soo much better. Well, there may just be a way.
Well, on the suggestion of the forum member Shidoshi, I investigated an executable file that is installed with the Home Server Connector software and is present on the server itself too: “clientrestorewizard.exe”. Don’t believe me? You can check yourself. It runs pretty much exactly like a normal full client restore, however you need to be *very* careful about the disks you select. If you aren’t, you may be instore for another restore!
What does this mean to you? Do you have a laptop or netbook that you need to provide drivers for to be able to restore it, but it still doesn’t work? Do you have a backup of your friends or parent’s computer who doesn’t leave with or near you? Or you just want to do a HDD upgrade but don’t want to wait three hours for the slow network to finish?
This is not supported, for many reasons. The least of which, just mentioned above. So this is definitely an advanced “at your own risk” guide. If you have any concerns about data loss, do not follow this guide!
I only had my server available to test this one, so pictures may vary or may not be accurate. But it should work on any computer with the client Connector software installed.
There are a number of other things that you will likely need to do also, like marking the boot partition as active, or editing the boot.ini file. I’ve verified that this does in fact work, and if you noticed above, there is a chance that you can and may wipe the wrong disk.
So, that’s how to restore a client computer without using the client restore disk!
3. February 2010 at 1:47 am
hi this is abdi i have problm with m computer,someone deletth whole soud software. so could you pleasefgave e some suggesion that i can reback my sound
7. February 2010 at 6:59 pm
Anyone have problems with it not allowing you to enter the server password? It immediately goes to the next screen and it indicates "an unknown network error has occurred during pc restore". Don't know why it would matter on the network, which it is connected without problems, given I installed the drive an an internal sata.
19. November 2009 at 2:30 am
Yeas you should!
.
I had to restore 4 times my IBM T40 XP professional after SP3 installation failed attempt. For some reason, SP3 would refuse to install on that machine, complaining about some driver. Luckily, WHS restore worked like a charm. No hustle, just a CD in the drive and having a cappuccino moment as the laptop was being restored.
I also restored an exotic Sun W2100z workstation using the required drivers on the USB flash drive. Again, WHS restore worked a champ.
Anyway, anybody who is serious about their data AND TIME, should invest in any WHS box.
I hope that the new version of WHS is going to bring more refined backup / restore features for WHS server itself (how about backup of a backup server to a remote/secondary WHS?), automatic partition resizing during restore … this should not be a big of a deal, should it?
19. November 2009 at 5:50 pm
It's not really a supported solution in the first place, so there are always going to be limitations in what you can and can't do in a situation like this. I used this as a "last resort" measure on my girlfriend's notebook when the restore kept failing on her machine using the Restore CD. I then figured that if there's a "clientrestorewizard" binary on the server itself like there is for every client (computers with the Connector installed), then the process should be about the same if you connect a disk directly to the server (non-pooled) and gave it a drive letter in Disk Management. I hadn't tried it, but Drashna graciously decided to test it and it apparently works. I wouldn't suggest it as a normal method of reimaging a restore, but for situations like the one Drashna listed, it's a viable option.
20. November 2009 at 8:36 am
Sorry for not clarifying. As for connecting the drive, you'd need to connect it physically. Either through an external enclosure, or internally. Either solution should automatically assign drive letters to the connected disks. You'd need to make note of which disks are which letters, and then assign those drive letters to the corresponding drives to be restored.
As for SSD, it would be the same as a regular HDD. If you have a 2.5" SATA disk, you could just connect that internally, or pick up a $20 usb enclosure.
And just FYI, the reason I didn't really go all indepth for this, is because it is not supported, and could case issues. So unless you have a good idea of what you are doing, it may not be a good idea to try this. But I'll still help you out if you really want to do it.
19. November 2009 at 5:55 pm
*Correction: I used something LIKE this in my situation. Rather than using the server, I restored her harddisk using my client computer in a simlar fashion. That's what gave me the idea of trying the server itself. I suppose if it's a netbook SSD you're attempting to replace that has a mini PCI-E connection, you might try connecting it directly to a server (note: this probably wouldn't apply to the MSS) via the internal PCI-E x2 or x4 slot and seeing if Winodws recognizes a new storage device. I'd try it on another client (desktop) if you have one, before attempting on a WHS box (if anything goes wrong, you can just restore the client desktop).
Again, as always. This is a "Use At Your Own Risk" kinda thing.
20. November 2009 at 8:31 am
As for making it active, disk management, right click boot partition, mark as active. As for making it bootable, that really depends on the OS, and the hardware configuration. Which is why I didn't really go into detail.
Vista/Win7 should be fine, worst case, run the startup recover and it should fix it just fine. For XP, it's a lot trickier.