Backup Windows Home Server Folders to an External Hard Drive

Backup Windows Home Server Folders to an External Hard Drive

Using Windows Home Server to backup computers on your local network is a great tool for your backup strategy. But what about backing up the data on the server itself? Here we take a look at using an external drive to backup some of your important data.

Adding External Drive for WHS Folder Backup

After plugging in the external drive open Windows Home Server Console and you’ll see the drive listed and that it’s not added yet. Right-click and select Add from the menu.

The Add a Hard Drive Wizard kicks off…

In the next screen it’s important to select the radio button next to Use this hard drive to back up files that are stored on your home server. Otherwise WHS will add it as additional storage for your data which is not what we want.

If the drive isn’t formatted as NTFS yet, select the radio button next to Yes, format this hard drive. If you’re not sure select this option anyway as formatting it again won’t hurt anything.

Create a name for the hard drive…

At the warning screen go ahead and click finish. If you want to make any changes at this point you can go back and make them.

Now wait while the drive is formatted and added to the server.

The drive has been successfully added and you can click Done.

Now when you go into WHS console you’ll see the drive added under Server Backup Hard Drives.

Backup Folders to External Drive

Now that the drive is set up and ready to be used it’s time to back up server files to it. In WHS Console go to Computers and Backup and you’ll see your server listed as Not backed up under Status. Right-click on the server and select Backup Now.

Here you can go through and decide which folders of data you want to be backed up to the external drive we just added. Check the box next to Remember these setting for future backups then click Backup Now.

The backup starts and you can hide the progress box or stop the backup at any time if you need to.

The amount of time it takes to backup will vary depending on the amount of data being backup. When it has successfully completed, you can close out of the Backup Now screen.

Go back to WHS Console and you’ll see the server has been backed up with the time and date.

Remove Drive

You might want to remove the drive and store it in a safe place. The best method for removing the backup drive is to going into Server Storage, right-click on the drive and select Remove.

Then you’re presented with the the choice to temporarily remove it or stop using it for backups. If you plan to use it again select to temporarily remove it.

If you ever need to get you data back from the external drive, you don’t need to add it back to WHS. You can plug it into any computer. When you open the drive you’ll see the backed up Shares and you can get the files you need.

This is a good process if you want to manually backup the data on your Windows Home Server from time to time.

Windows Home Server - Backup to LAN

Windows Home Server - Backup to LAN

Steps :

1. Selected a NAS whose file system supports large file sizes (important for video backup - don't get a cheap NAS with FAT32! I chose a Buffalo LinkStation Live.)
2. Created a new WHS user named 'backup' with full permissions to every share on the WHS.
3. Created a new NAS user with the same name/password as the WHS backup user
4. Created new share(s) on the NAS and gave only the backup user access (important, since the data on the NAS won't inherit the security permissions from the WHS - don't want everybody on your network to see the backup data)
5. Install robocopy on WHS (simply copy robocopy.exe to C:\Windows\system32 or similar)
6. On WHS, create scheduled task for each share to be backed up:


robocopy \\whs\share \\whs_backup\share /COPY:DAT /E /FFT /DCOPY:T /R:0 /W:0 /TS /FP /NP
/LOG:\\whs_backup\share\backup.logCommand line explanation:
/COPY:DAT - since your NAS doesn't have NTFS, the only thing you can reliably copy is the data
/E - subdirectories included
/FFT - since we only want to copy files that have changed since the last backup, and since NAS doesn't have NTFS, have to use this option to ensure the timestamps are selected correctly (this was the hardest thing to figure out!)
/DCOPY:T - copies timestamps on folders too
/R:0 - don't retry locked files (don't want the automated backup to hang)
/W:0 - don't wait between retries
/TS /FP /NP /LOG - log file settings (really useful to figure things out when it's not working!)
(Note that I didn't use the /PURGE option; I want to keep files that might have been accidentally deleted in the source. Might be a good idea to run a purge job occasionally, though, especially if the NAS starts to fill up.)

7. Made sure the scheduled task was set to run as the backup user - required for read/write permissions to the NAS folders
8. (Not sure if this is necessary) Went into the WHS control panel users panel and made the backup user a member of the backup operator group
9. (Optional) Installed the WHS Advanced Admin Console add-in so I could remotely check/modify scheduled tasks, and can browse to NAS shares via 'My Network Places'

That's it - it's been running like clockwork for two months now, backing up several hundred gigs of data and several thousand files in a 6-client small business network. The NAS is physically located in an adjacent building (wireless bridge connects the two), so should be protected even if one of the buildings gets hit by lightning.

Restore process (which I haven't had to use yet) is simply connecting to the NAS as the backup user (password required!) and browsing for the desired files.

for : Backup Windows Home Server Folders to an External Hard Drive

Kill Processes from the Windows Command Line

Kill Processes from the Windows Command Line

If you are familiar with linux/unix, you will be very accustomed to the ability to kill (and start) processes from the command line. Linux gives you a very rich set of command line tools that simply don’t exist on Windows by default.

Enter the Command Line Process Viewer/Killer/Suspender utility from the Beyond Logic website. This is a simple command line utility that lets you perform a number of utilities including viewing a list of processes, killing processes, and even changing the priority of a process.

Syntax:

process -k “Process ID”

process -k “Process Name”

Example usage:

> process -k “notepad.exe”

Command Line Process Viewer/Killer/Suspender for Windows NT/2000/XP V2.03
Copyright(C) 2002-2003 Craig.Peacock@beyondlogic.org
Killing PID 2304 ‘notepad.exe’

OR:

> process -k 2192

Command Line Process Viewer/Killer/Suspender for Windows NT/2000/XP V2.03
Copyright(C) 2002-2003 Craig.Peacock@beyondlogic.org
Killing PID 2192 ‘notepad.exe’

Generate a List of Installed Drivers from the Command Line

Generate a List of Installed Drivers from the Command Line

We’ve already covered how to take a quick look at the list of installed drivers using DriverView, but what if you are on a machine that doesn’t already have that software installed? There’s a command line utility that comes bundled with Windows Vista or XP that gives you similar output.

It’s also useful if you are a command line junkie and have cygwin installed… you can just pipe the command through grep and quickly see exactly what you are looking for.

Running the command with no parameters will give you the default output:

To get verbose output you can use the /v parameter:

driverquery /v

Or to output in list or csv format instead of the default table format, you can use the /FO switch

driverquery /FO [list, table, csv]

So for instance, if you ran the following command to give you verbose information in list format:

driverquery /FO list /v

You should see output similar to this:

If you have cygwin installed you could pipe this through grep, but you should be able to pipe the output into a file, for instance like this:

driveryquery > test.txt

Always useful to know how to use the command line!

How to automate FTP uploads from the Windows Command Line

How to automate FTP uploads from the Windows Command Line

Windows has included batch files since before it existed… batch files are really old! Old or not, I still find myself frequently creating batch files to help me automate common tasks. One common task is uploading files to a remote FTP server. Here’s the way that I got around it.

First, you will have to create a file called fileup.bat in your windows directory, or at least inside some directory included in your path. You can use the “path” command to see what the current path is.

Inside the batch file, you will want to paste the following:

@echo off
echo user MyUserName> ftpcmd.dat
echo MyPassword>> ftpcmd.dat
echo bin>> ftpcmd.dat
echo put %1>> ftpcmd.dat
echo quit>> ftpcmd.dat
ftp -n -s:ftpcmd.dat SERVERNAME.COM
del ftpcmd.dat
You will want to replace the MyUserName, MyPassword and SERVERNAME.COM with the correct values for your ftp server. What this batch file is doing is scripting the ftp utility using the -s option for the command line utility.

The batch file uses the “echo” command to send text to the ftp server as if you had typed it. In the middle of the file you can add extra commands, potentionally a change directory command:

echo cd /pathname/>>ftpcmd.dat

In order to call this batch file, you will call the batchfile using the fileup.bat name that we gave it, and pass in the name of a file as the parameter. You don’t have to type the .bat part of the filename to make it work, either.

Example:

> fileup FileToUpload.zip

Connected to ftp.myserver.com.
220 Microsoft FTP Service
ftp> user myusername
331 Password required for myusername.

230 User myusername logged in.
ftp> bin
200 Type set to I.
ftp> put FileToUpload.zip
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for FileToUpload.zip
226 Transfer complete.
ftp: 106 bytes sent in 0.01Seconds 7.07Kbytes/sec.
ftp> quit
And that’s all there is to it. Now your file should be sitting on the remote server.

Display a list of Started Services from the Command Line (Windows)

Display a list of Started Services from the Command Line (Windows)

To interact with the services panel from the command line, Windows provides the Net utility. From the command prompt, you can use this utility to start, stop, pause and continue services. What most people don’t realize is that you can also use this to display a list of services that are running on your computer.

Syntax:

net start

Provides this output(will vary based on your machine):

These Windows services are started:

Adobe Active File Monitor
Adobe LM Service
Application Layer Gateway Service
Ati HotKey Poller
Automatic Updates
Background Intelligent Transfer Service
Bluetooth Service
Cisco Systems, Inc. VPN Service
COM+ Event System
Computer Browser
Cryptographic Services
DCOM Server Process Launcher
DHCP Client
Distributed Link Tracking Client
DNS Client
Error Reporting Service
Event Log
FTP Publishing
Help and Support
HID Input Service
HP WMI Interface
IIS Admin
Infrared Monitor
Logical Disk Manager
Machine Debug Manager
Microsoft Search

Hide Flashing Command Line and Batch File Windows On Startup

Hide Flashing Command Line and Batch File Windows On Startup

I use a lot of batch files, command line applications, and even Ruby scripts (which run from the command line). One of the things that has always irritated me is the flashing command prompt window when I make a shortcut for a batch file, especially when I put it into the startup folder to run when I first login.

There’s a really useful utility that you can use called Hidden Start (hstart), which will start up a command line application hidden in the background, which eliminates the flashing window.

If you launch the utility with no parameters, it will pop up the settings dialog.

When using this utility, there are three key things to remember: Use the /NOWINDOW parameter to keep the window hidden, use the /D=path argument to make sure that the current directory is set correctly, and make sure to surround your application argument with quotes.

For instance, if I had a batch file stored in c:\scripts\mybatch.bat, I would start it by using the following parameters in my shortcut:

hstart /NOWINDOW /D=c:\scripts “c:\scripts\mybatch.bat”

You’ll probably want to copy hstart.exe into somewhere in the system path, for instance C:\windows might work nicely.


Download Hidden Start (hstart)

How To Fix System Tray Tooltips Not Displaying in Windows XP

How To Fix System Tray Tooltips Not Displaying in Windows XP

There’s a bug in Windows XP where sometimes the system tray tooltips and popup notifications will show up behind the taskbar, or behind other windows. This is really annoying when you want to use a tooltip.

There’s not a known perfect solution to the problem. The way to make everything start working again is to do the following:

•Right click the taskbar, choose properties, and uncheck the checkbox that says “Keep task bar on top of other windows”.
•Click Apply
•Check the checkbox again.
•Click Apply again.
This will temporarily make the system work right again, but you will have to repeat these steps if it happens in the future.

Add the Command Prompt to the Windows Explorer Right-Click Menu

Add the Command Prompt to the Windows Explorer Right-Click Menu

A hidden functionality in Windows allows you to right click on a directory, and select “Command Prompt Here” from the menu.

Here’s the registry hack to get this working. Make sure you back up your registry just in case. I’ll show you the step-by-step method, but you can skip down to the bottom for the alternate reg file.

Step-By-Step Method:

Type regedit.exe into the Start\Run dialog, and then navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell

Once you are at that key, right click and choose the New Key option:

Name the key “CommandPrompt” without the quotes and then double-click on the default value. Change the text to “Command Prompt Here” as seen here:

Right click on the new Command key and select New key, as you did before. Name the new key Command as well, and then double-click the default value of that key. Set the text of that key to this:

cmd.exe /k cd %1
You can see what it should look like here:

Now when you right click on the folder, you should see this dialog:

That will open up a prompt like this:

Alternate method:

You can create a text file named anything.reg, and insert this text into it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CommandPrompt]
@=”Command Prompt:”
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\CommandPrompt\Command]
@=”cmd.exe /k cd %1″

Double click on that file, and the text will be entered into the registry, and you’ll have the same right click command prompt.

Enable Quick Copy and Paste with the Mouse on SecureCRT

Enable Quick Copy and Paste with the Mouse on SecureCRT

SecureCRT uses the Ctrl+Ins and Shift+Ins keys for copy and paste instead of the normal windows defaults of Ctrl+C / V. The reason why this is done is because most unix or linux varieties use those keys as part of the shell.

I was searching for a quicker method of doing a copy and paste than having to use Ctrl+Ins key combination, when I stumbled on a much simpler way of doing it…. just have it automatically copy the text to the clipboard when I select it with my mouse. Pasting is just as simple: just click the middle mouse button.

Here’s how to enable this: Go to Options \ Global Options on the menu:

In the Category listing, click on Terminal, and you should see this section of the configuration screen:

Just check the first two checkboxes, and you are now in business.

For example, I wanted to copy this line into the clipboard, so I just selected it with my mouse as shown, and it was immediately on the clipboard, no questions asked.

         

Disable those annoying "X Application has Encountered a Problem and Must be Shut Down" messages in Windows XP

Disable those annoying "X Application has Encountered a Problem and Must be Shut Down" messages in Windows XP

It’s frustrating enough when your application crashes. Then the annoying dialog expects you to “Send an Error Report to Microsoft”. As if I want Microsoft to know exactly which programs I’m running on my computer.

Here’s two ways to turn off that error reporting. First, you can Right-Click on My Computer, go to the Advanced Tab, and choose the “Disable error reporting” option.

Alternatively, you can navigate to the services console in Administrative tools, find the Error Reporting Service, go into properties and disable it. Either way, those annoying dialogs are gone!

Add Copy To / Move To to the Windows Explorer Right Click Menu

Add Copy To / Move To to the Windows Explorer Right Click Menu

A hidden functionality in Windows allows you to right click on a file, select Copy To Folder or Move To Folder, and the move to box will pop up and let you choose a location to either copy or move the file or folder to.

Update: Downloadable version also available.

Here’s the quick registry hack to get this working. As usual, back up your registry just in case. You will want to browse down to this key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers

Once you are at that key, right click and choose the New Key option:

Now you will double-click on the (Default) value and enter the following:

{C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}

Click OK and continue.

If you want to enable Move To, you will repeat the same steps, except creating a new key named Move To, and using this value:

{C2FBB631-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}
Now when you right click on a file or folder, you should see the following options:

Let’s click Copy To Folder just to see what happens….

And that’s it. Useful!

Defrag Multiple Hard Drives At Once In Windows

Defrag Multiple Hard Drives At Once In Windows

The Disk Defragment utility in Windows XP does not include a way to defragment all hard drives at the same time, which is inconvienient when you have more than one hard drive in your computer.

The method we are going to use is by creating a batch file to defragment all of the drives, one after the other.

The disk defrag utility in Windows XP can be triggered from the command line with the following syntax:


Windows Disk Defragmenter
Copyright (c) 2001 Microsoft Corp. and Executive Software International, Inc.
Usage:
defrag [-a] [-f] [-v] [-?]
volume drive letter or mount point (d: or d:\vol\mountpoint)
-a Analyze only
-f Force defragmentation even if free space is low
-v Verbose output
-? Display this help text

First, we’ll create a file named defragall.bat, and place it anywhere you like, as long as you’ll remember where it is. If you want to run it from the command line, you could place it in the \windows directory so that it will be available in the system path.

For each hard drive, add a line to the batch file. For instance, if we want to defragment drives C: , D: , and F: we will add these three lines:

defrag c: -f
defrag d: -f
defrag f: -f

To run the defrag, just either double-click on the batch file or start it from the command line.

Disable "Your computer might be at risk" Popup in Windows XP SP2

Since upgrading to XP SP2 a long time ago, I constantly get nagged by a popup message that tells me my computer might be at risk because I don’t have an antivirus software installed. Here’s how to turn off that annoying message.

Note: You should probably have antivirus software installed.

You will want to open up your control panel, and then open the Security Center icon.

On the left hand side of the security center window, you will see a resources section. Click the bottom link, “Change the way Security Center alerts me”

You can choose which alert to disable here. Since I don’t have antivirus software, I unchecked the bottom checkbox.

No more annoying popups!

Login Automatically on Windows XP Home / Professional

If your Windows XP installation forces you to login every time you reboot, you can automate the login process easily so that you won’t have to login again.

Note that for security reasons, you would usually want to have a password, but for a home computer you may not care.

Go to the Start menu, click Run, and type in the following:

control userpasswords2

You will be presented with a window similar to this one:

Uncheck the box, and click the OK button. You will be presented with a password dialog for the currently logged in user.

Now when you reboot your system, you will automatically be logged in.

This can be very useful when you are installing a bunch of software or testing out configurations.

Disable Fast User Switching on Windows XP

Fast User Switching is a way for users to quickly switch between accounts without having to fully log off. This is just one more service that doesn’t really need to be started.

•Navigate to the Services console in Administrative tools.
•Double-click on Fast User Switching and change Startup Type to disable.
•Hit the Stop button if the service is started, and then hit OK.
One more unnecessary service stopped.

Save CPU and RAM: Disable the Indexing Service on Windows XP

Save CPU and RAM: Disable the Indexing Service on Windows XP
If there is one bloated and unnecessary service that you should immediately disable, it’s definitely the Indexing Service built into Windows XP. The idea behind it is that you can search for files more quickly if it is enabled…. but you are using Google Desktop for that, right?

The indexing service seems to eat up a lot of CPU on every machine I’ve used, especially when you have the amount of files that I’ve got. Let’s disable it.

•Navigate to the Services console via Administrative Tools.
•Double-click on the Indexing Service and change the startup type to disabled.
•Hit the stop button if it is started, which is likely, and then hit OK.
Yet another unnecessary service stopped!

Lock Folder in XP using DOS

The best way to hide a folder is using the cacls commands(locking)
it is very simple
for this u shud ve folder in NTFS drive. (say e:)
once it is done open run->cmd

for locking the folder
cacls e:\(name of the folder in drive f) /d everyone

for unlocking type
cacls e:\(name of the folder in drive f) /g everyone:f

once u hav locked a folder and if anyone tries opening it a message access is denied will be displayed. u dont hav to hide a folder after doing this.

writing colourful names of folder

[{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}]

iconarea_text=0x00F007aa



copy this code in notepad and save as desktop.ini

and put the file in any drives folder name will be change

edit 0x00F007aa to switch to different colour.

How to fix corrupted windows files in XP?

How to fix corrupted windows file is very easy.Following these following steps


Requirement:

1. Windows XP CD

Now, follow this steps:

1. Place the xp cd in your cd/dvd drive
2. Go to start
3. run
4. type "sfc /scannow" (without ")

Now sit back and relax, it should all load and fix all your corrupted file on win XP.Hope this method can fix your corrupted xp system files

Change My documents location in xp

I think many of you don't know about this fact that the storage location of "My Documents" can be changed. Its is safe , when crash or need to be formatted
Normally windows save the "My Documents" folder on your C-drive. But when you right-click on it and go to properties, you can change the location where you want windows to save your Documents folder.

Steps

1.Right-click on My documents

2.Go to properties

3.Change your location

This can be very useful when If windows hangs or become crupt and you have to format your C-drive again,Then you documents will not be lost due to formating.

Disable Autoplay of Audio CDs and USB Drives

I find it very annoying when I go home from work and plug my laptop into my external hard drive… The autoplay window always pops up and asks me what I want to do with the files, which may be fine the first time, but definitely isn’t after a year of that.

To get to the configuration screen for this setting, go to Start Menu \ Run and type in:

gpedit.msc

You will see the Group Policy window. You should select Administrative Templates \ System in the tree view:

                       

You will see an item in the right side pane called “Turn off Autoplay”

Double click the item, and set the radio button to Enabled, and change the “Turn off Autoplay on” to All Drives.

Now you should be safe from the autoplay monster.