If you’ve been thinking of upgrading from Windows Home Server v1 to Windows Home Server 2011, you may be aware that there’s no easy strategy for migrating your data from your old home server to new. To help with the migration planning, a new data migration tool has just been released. WHS2WHS is designed to help users with separate WHS v1 and WHS 2011 hardware plan, and partially automate the data transfer from Windows Home Server v1′s Drive Extender Storage Pool to WHS 2011′s shared folders.
The developer, Mediadogg Software describes the migration tool as follows:
The WHS Migration Assistant (WHS2WHS) is designed to help primarily with the planning of the data move from Windows Home Server to Windows Home Server 2011. There are two versions of WHS2WHS: the Basic version and the Pro version. The Pro version, in addition to the planning functions, has functions for partially automating the actual data movements and other functions for saving, restoring and printing multiple plans. NOTE: WHS2WHS Pro does not directly copy, erase nor move any data. It provides a planning template as well as a framework for invoking other tools, using the plan as a guide.
Method of Operation:
Think of the move operation as going from left to right. WHS2WHS presents a screen that shows the shared folders from the source WHS system on the left, and the Volumes (drives) associated with the WHS 2011 system on the right. This is due to the fact that WHS 2011 uses a different scheme for managing shared folders. Instead of locating folders on a large pool of data that Drive Extender maps onto multiple drives, WHS 2011 requires the administrator to allocate shared folders to logical disk volumes, which usually correspond directly to physical disk drives, but not necessarily. Technologies such as RAID can be used to create logical volumes with various reliability and performance attributes comprised of multiple physical drives. WHS 2011 works with the logical drives (or “volumes”).
WHS2WHS supports three basic scenarios for operation:
- Both Source and Target folders are network shares (e.g. “\\SourceServer\Movies” and “\\TargetServer\Movies” )
- Source folders are network shares and Target folders are mapped (network) drives. (e.g. “\\sourceserver\Movies”and “M:\” )
- Source folders are network shares and Target folders are WHS 2011 folder names on local volumes (e.g. “\\SourceServer\Movies” and “D:\\ServerFolders\Movies” )
WHS2WHS automatically formats path names to handle these scenarios, regardless of where the tool is running, with one exception: In the case where WHS2WHS is running directly on WHS V1, you must select the Option: “Force Target Paths to WHS 2011 Format”, on the Options Menu. This allows you to install WHS 2011 volumes on WHS V1 and high-speed copy data from WHS V1 shares.
The basic edition of the tool is available for free, whilst the Pro version, with additional features is priced at $15.95.
More: WHS2WHS | User Guide
