In the event that a drive fails, you restore the backup to regain access to your data. Just as Small Business Server users have been doing for years, you will configure your server to back itself up on a regular basis to a dedicated backup hard drive connected to your server. Microsoft’s answer to the data protection question is to use the Server Backup feature. Unfortunately, no, there is nothing new to protect the data stored on the server. The Move Folder Wizard is Microsoft’s answer for how to easily grow your Home Server storage capabilities, let’s hope they have something equally innovative and powerful to protect your data stored on the server. Note that the Drive Format tools will limit you to partitions of a maximum size of 2TB, in order to fit within the limitations of the Server Backup feature. The following screenshots outline this process. To see this in action, please watch our Windows Home Server Move Folder Wizard Learning Bite. Once configured, you can easily use the Move Folder Wizard to move your data to the new drive as needed. From here, you can automatically format and configure the new drive for additional storage. As Hard Drives are added to the Home Server, your health alerts will notify you that a new Hard Drive is available. Here’s an excerpt from the announcement on how the Move Folder Wizard works (be sure to watch the YouTube video linked at the end for a nice drink of the Microsoft Kool-Aid).Ī new Move Folder Wizard makes it easy for you to move data from one drive to another. There is really only one change, and that is the replacement of Drive Extender with the functional equivalent of Windows Explorer embedded in the Dashboard, dubbed the “Move Folder Wizard.”

In the announcement, Microsoft notes that this is the first public preview to “include changes to the storage features” (aka removal of Drive Extender) and offers to guide you through the changes you can expect. If you’ve not yet read the announcement from Microsoft, please do so here before continuing on.

Today Microsoft have finally broken their silence on what storage management will look like in Windows Home Server 2011, and with the absence of consumer friendly storage management things do not look good for the average home user. You have gotten a taste of this with the out of touch manner that the removal of Drive Extender was announced and the subsequent silence from Microsoft on how your data would be protected on Windows Home Server Vail. Ever since the Windows Home Server team was absorbed into the Small Business Server team I’ve observed a steady decline in the attention the team has placed on the average home user while designing the next generation Windows Home Server products.

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