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pbwalker wrote:

CHLSteve wrote: I will take the hard drive out of your PC, and smash it with a hammer to simulate it crashing.

No need. Windows will do it all by itself.

You goofball! It's called a hardware failure, and every OS is just as susceptible to it as the next. Yes, you made my point about how long the recovery process will take, but not with WHS... So there's the "challenge".

russ wrote: I have been out of the Linux loop for a while now but i would be willing to bet anything Windows Home Server can do a good Linux distro can do better.

Challenge accepted. You Linux zealots drive me crazy.

I'll take WHS, you get your choice of Linux distro. I will take the hard drive out of your PC, and smash it with a hammer to simulate it crashing. You can replace the drive, and we'll time how long it takes you to get back online and restore all your files, settings, programs, etc... including configuration of your email, network, and driver installations for your hardware and printers. Oh yeah, for all the user accounts that are on that PC--maybe your wife and kids each have their own settings and email too.

With WHS, I'll be done in less than an hour, how about you? I guarantee you won't finish in less than 4, maybe 6 or more.

russ wrote: ...you may struggle a little at first I know I did.... Unlike most of the time in life you dont have to spend a lot of money to get the good stuff, because this time it truly is free.

My time is not free. "Struggling" to learn a Linux distro when there is a product that will do what I want right out of the box sounds like a good trade to me. Truly free means I don't have to jack with it!

Lots of bad advice being tossed around here. I suspect most of you haven't even LOOKED at Home Server, much less used it. Since this question was directly about WHS, I suggest you be familiar with the product before recommending something else such as a Linux box, NAS, USB, or whatever. NONE of those things even comes close to what WHS offers. These products are not even in the same league, really.

That's like saying I'm looking for a minivan to drive my large family around, and you guys get online and start recommending bicycles and scooters because they are "cheaper", "easier", or "faster". Bad tech guys, bad!

PS--Network backups are incremental, and don't require that much bandwidth. Also, GbE is pretty much the norm now, which makes the speed virtually on par with USB 2.0

Home Server has some features that make it really neat, that Linux cannot offer you.

For example: there is a backup client so that it will take care of all the (Windows) computers in your house. Hard drive failure? No problem! Replace the drive, restore the backup, and everything is back how it was (and I mean everything--programs, settings, documents, etc...)

It also uses a single instance store so that you only have to backup one copy of a file on a computer, and all the other computers will "point" to that backup. For example, if you have two computers with large MP3 collections, the server will only back those files up once for both computers saving you on space. It also does this for Windows system files, which all computers have in common.