Added two 160gb IDE drives and a generic 10/100 NIC to my Home Server box and reinstalled Windows Home Server. Everything went much like my previous install but now I have enough storage to try out some more features.
I'll be connecting the other home PC's to the server this week-end but until then I've been playing with my Dell Inspiron 9400 (with Windows Vista Ultimate) as the only connected client. This has been easy and intuitive for file sharing but some things have not been so easy or intuitive.
Automatic nightly backups have not been starting and there is a bit of dross left around when opening backups from the client console. I have reported these as a bug to Microsoft Connect and hope they get some help from this.
Here are some things that I have learned by reading the forums and playing atround with the product:-
You can reset the client console by clicking the Reset button at the login screen (this is not so intuitive).
You can do a repair (basically a reinstall) of WHS from the installation CD. You need to select "Upgrade" to repair the server install without needing a new Product Key (also not intuitive).
You can clean up old backups by selecting Computers & Backup --> Select the computer --> Click View Backups --> Select a Backup --> Select the Delete at next Backup Cleanup Radiop Button --> Click O.K. --> go to Windows Home Server Settings (little gears top right of client console) and Select Computers & Backup --> Click the "Cleanup Now" button at the bottom. (Bit of a round-trip isn't it?)
Shutting down and restarting the client console application can sometimes clear erroneous server state status messages but this can sometimes also result in the console faiuling to connect to the server. (either it can't find the server or claims that the user is unknown!)
All-in-all I'm still very impressed with this beta and it can only get better as it approaches R.T.M. I only hope that Microsoft listen to the feedback and implement some of the suggestions there.
Cheers,
Neale