Writers and Contributors Wanted

Andrew Edney
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Over the next few weeks, connecteddigitalworld.com will be going through a redesign, with lots of new and exciting features being launched.

I’m putting the call out to anyone who might be interested in writing for the site, whether its a review of some hardware or software, hints and tips, anything really that you think might benefit others or you just want to write about.

If you are interested, drop me an email to andrew @ usingwhs.com (just remove the spaces) and introduce yourself, and tell me what you would be interested in doing.

Also, if anyone has any ideas on what they would like to see on the site, whether its Windows Home Server, Media Center, Windows 7, whatever, send me an email or leave a comment.

Hope to hear from you!

Upcoming Security Conferences

Andrew Edney
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1

For those of you who are interested, there are a number of security conferences coming up over the next few months.

These include the Infosec World Conference & Expo 2009 run by the MIS Training Institute and held in Orlando, Florida. The conference starts on the 7th March with two MISdays of optional training sessions, followed by 3 days of conference and then another 2 days of optional training.

InfoSec World 2009 will deliver over 100 sessions, dozens of case studies, multiple tracks (including a brand-new, hands-on hacking techniques track delivered by The SANS Institute), 15 in-depth workshops, 2 co-located summits and over 140 exhibitors! For more information about the conference and to register, click here.

bh Another interesting conference is Black Hat. Black Hat DC just finished, and Black Hat Europe starts on the 14th April and will held in Amsterdam. Black Hat has 4 separate briefing tracks, which are Hardware and Embedded Devices, Reverse Engineering and Malware, Client Wars and Application Security, Forensics and Network Protection with lots of different sessions in each track delivering up to date and relevant information on the latest security issues.

For more information about this conference and to register, click here.

Home Server Show 35 Out Now

Andrew Edney
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HomeServerShow graphicDavid over at the Home Server Show has just released podcast number 35 – Before you install.

This week’s show includes what to do when you first get your Windows Home Server, news and other show bits as usual. Our article on backing up your Mac using the new HP MediaSmart Servers also gets a mention (thanks David),

You can get it through iTunes, or various other methods, for more information click here.

Western Digital Home Backup and Media Server

Andrew Edney
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wdfMyBook_World_H1N Yesterday Western Digital announced its newly redesigned My Book World Edition network storage drive. Designed for consumers who have multiple computers on a home network, the new drive will be available in 1 terabyte and 2 terabyte capacities, and is compatible with PC and Mac computers.

My Book World Edition network drives are designed to automate and simplify the backup chore for the 36 million networked homes in the US according to research firm Parks Associates. Just plug the My Book World Edition drive into a network router, click a few buttons and the My Book World Edition storage device backs up the files from all the PCs and Macs on the network. Any changes to the files on these computers are automatically and continuously backed up to the drive.
My Book World Edition’s massive capacities are available from any computer in the home. Combined with high performance, this makes it easy to build a shared digital media library. Music, photos and videos can be streamed directly from the My Book World Edition drive to any PC, Mac or connected DLNA media player (such as Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles, wireless digital pictures frames or TVs) using the integrated UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) media server and iTunes Music server software. Families can also securely access and share their centralized files from anywhere in the world where they have access to the Internet, using the My Book World Edition drive’s Web remote access service.

The new My Book World Edition network hard drives are available now in the 1 TB capacity and expected later this month in the 2 TB capacity. MSRP for the My Book World Edition storage system with 1 TB is $229.99 USD and 2 TB is $449.99 USD.

Backing up a Mac with an HP MediaSmart EX485 or EX487

Andrew Edney
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Now that the new HP MediaSmart Servers are shipping, I thought I would post something on how to configure your Apple Mac to use Time Machine to back up to your Windows Home Server.

Time Machine is an application that comes preinstalled on a Mac that allows you to backup everything on your computer – a bit like WHS. This includes documents, photos, applications, and more. Time Machine takes hourly backups of your computer and will keep those backups for 24 hours, daily backups for a month and weekly backups until your backup disk becomes full up.

This is essentially a walk-through from installing the software on the Mac, to performing your first backup.

There are a few important things to note however before continuing on.

1 – the Apple Mac needs to be running Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

2 – you need an HP MediaSmart EX485 or EX487, the for previous versions will not work until HP release the software update and there is currently no dates for this.

3 – Backing up a Mac doesn’t work in quite the same way as a Windows client, which I will come onto in a moment, and there is no way to do a complete system restore onto a Mac from WHS, again which I will cover in a moment.

4 – it is assumed that you have already set up your Windows Home Server and configured it just as you would have previously.

Ok, so here goes….

The first thing you need to do, is check that you have Administrator rights on the Mac. To do this, click System Preferences, Accounts and ensure that the Allow user to administer this computer is checked.

Once this is done just pop the Software Installation Disc that came with the MediaSmart into your Mac. Double click on the Install HP MediaSmart Server Software.pkg icon.

Click Continue on the Welcome Screen, then read the EULA and click Continue again, then assuming that you agree with the EULA (you have to otherwise you cannot continue) click Agree.

You now have the option to change the install location should you really want to. When you have changed it, should you want to, click Install.

You will need to enter your Mac account password and then click OK.

The installation will now commence and should only take a moment or two. When it has completed you will see the Installation completed successfully screen – just click Close to finish.

This will bring up the Preferences windows. Enter the name of your WHS and also the Server password.

If it connects successfully you will see the word Authenticated appear above the Apply button. If it fails you will see Validation Error. Just enter the details again. If it still fails, and you are sure that the details are correct, just check that the WHS is online and that your Mac is connected to the network.

The next step is to configure the amount of space that will be used to backup your Mac.

Enter the amount of backup disk space you want to use in GB and click the Apply button. This will then prepare your WHS. Depending on the size you selected this might take a few moments.

Picture 14

You will the be asked if you want to use “Backup to HP MediaSmart Server” to back up using Time Machine. Click Use as Backup Disk to continue.

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And that is is – Time Machine will now be used to backup your Mac to your WHS.

There is nothing else you need to do, the first backup will start within an hour. When your Mac is backing up, you will be able to see the progress.

Picture 26

Just as you had with backing up your Windows clients, the first time you backup your Mac it could take a long time, so be patient.

If you want to see information about your backups, for example, when the last backup took place, or when the next backup is due, just open Time Machine.

Picture 28

Time Machine will just continue to run in the background for you.

When you want to restore from Time Machine, you get a cool looking view which allows you to switch between backups and select the files you want to restore.

Picture 29

As I mentioned earlier, you cannot restore the entire computer in the same way as you can with Windows clients and WHS. If you want or need to restore your Mac, you must first install the Mac OS, then the HP MediaSmart Server Client software, select the disk called Backup to the HP MediaSmart Server in the Preference window and then run Time Machine, selecting the backup you want to restore.

It is important to note as well that the backups are stored on your WHS in a shared folder called Mac, your Mac doesn’t show up on the Computers and Backups tab. It is also important to note that by default, the Mac shared folder has duplication turned off, so if your backups are important to you, you should consider switching on folder duplication for the folder.

If you open the folder, you will see a file the size that you created earlier.

mac folder

And that is pretty much
it. It is simple to install, configure and use to make sure that your Mac clients are backed up, and the restore process is straightforward as well. It is a shame that it doesn’t work in quite the same way for the Mac as it does for Windows, but at least you have everything you need to get your Mac back up and running in the event of a major problem.

The Home Server Show 34 – Interview with Via on the A1000, A2000 and NSD-7800

Andrew Edney
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1

David over at the Home Server Show has just released podcast number 34.

This week’s show includes and interview with Via on their new hardware releases, news and other show bits.

You can get it through iTunes, or various other methods, including clicking here.

New HP MediaSmart Home Servers

Andrew Edney
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0

The two new HP MediaSmart Home Servers are now shipping, or at least are shipping from some places. Amazon.com are still showing them as pre-order but people are reporting that they are receiving them. If you want to  order yours from Amazon.com you can do some from the links below.

HP EX485 MediaSmart Home Server

HP EX487 MediaSmart Home Server

The new HP MediaSmart Servers both contain Intel Celeron 2.0GHz 64-bit processor, the main difference between the two is that the HP EX485 comes with 750GB of storage where as the HP EX487 comes with 1.5TB of storage. Both come with Windows Home Server and both ship with the new updated HP software that includes Mac support for those of you with Apple Macs.

Have you received your new HP MediaSmart server yet? If so, let us know what you think of it.

Unfortunately for those of us that don’t live in the US, it seems that HP are not planning on releasing the new MediaSmart servers outside of the US. If this changes, we will be sure to let everyone know.

Syncing Two Windows Home Servers

Andrew Edney
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1

Do you own more than one Windows Home Server? Have you ever thought about using one to back the other up and visa versa?

If so, Home Sever Hacks has a really interesting article on how to synchronise two Windows Home Servers with Microsoft’s Sync Toy so that you can use both to give you that little bit of extra protection.

To read the full article, click here. Once again, an excellent post from the Home Server Hacks.

Seagate Hard Drive Problems

Andrew Edney
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While this may not exactly be “new” news, anyone with certain makes of Seagate hard drives should check to see if the drives they have are affected by a firmware bug.

Information can be found here along with information on how to check if your drive is affected, and how to download and install new firmware.

I personally have had 3 of Seagate’s 1 TB drive with issues – one was DOA and had to be replaced, one had the firmware bug just before they announced the new firmware and one I was able to update.

If you have any Seagate drives at all, check the site and make sure you have the latest firmware.

Unfortunately Seagate have not done a very good job at all of dealing with this issue. I was told in early December when I called that there was no firmware bug and they wouldn’t give me the updated firmware, only for them to announce there was a bug just a few days later. A lot of people are still waiting to find out what to do with their “bricked” hard drives – myself included. Come on Seagate, sort this out, it’s just not good enough!

Windows Home Server January 2009 Update

Andrew Edney
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0

Today the Windows Home Server team is releasing a small update to the product.  The update improves the capability of Windows Home Server to repair abnormalities detected in the home computer backup database.   The update should be automatically downloaded and installed on your home server over the next several days, if you have Windows Update turned on.  You can check if you have Windows Update turned on, by opening the Windows Home Server Console – Settings – General page.

The Knowledge Base article for this update will be available shortly from this link.

Internet Explorer 8 RC1 Available Now

Andrew Edney
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0

The 1st Release Candidate of Internet Explorer 8 is now available to download and use.

IE8 in the next in a long line Internet browsers from Microsoft. IE8 Beta 2 could be a little flaky at times (it was a beta after all), so this version should be better.

Since Beta 2, some of the changes in RC1 include the following:

ClickJacking protection.  The SmartScreen Filter now includes the ability to help detect and prevent “ClickJacking” which is a malicious technique of tricking web users into revealing confidential information or taking control of their computer.

InPrivate. Helps to protect user’s data and privacy from being retained “locally” on a PC. InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering can now be used independently.

Performance improvements. Reduces the time that users must wait when starting the browser, opening a “new tab”, or loading a page.

User interface and experience updates to help ensure a better user experience.

To download IE8 RC1, click here and then click on the Download now button.

The Media Center Show 2008 Awards Show

Andrew Edney
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0

While we were all in Las Vegas for CES, Ian Dixon recorded the Media Center 2008 Awards Show which I was honoured to be a part of. A number of bloggers, including myself, Terry Walsh and other enthusiasts took part.

We had a great evening recording the show.

If you want to listen to the podcast, and you should, click here.

New Update for HP MediaSmart Servers

Andrew Edney
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0

Today HP have released a new update for owners for their MediaSmart Servers.

This update contains a number of updates although it is not that clear at this point what those updates are!

To update your MediaSmart Server, just click the Check for Updates link on the MediaSmart tab in the Windows Home Server Console and follow the prompts.

Try Windows 7 today

Andrew Edney
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1

Here at CES earlier this week, Microsoft announced the release of the public beta of Windows 7. You can download it today and have a play with it by going to the Windows 7 beta download site. You can also download it if you have a TechNet or MSDN subscription.

Just remember it is still in beta so there may be problems or as Microsoft put it on the site “it may be glitchy”.

To learn more about Windows 7 and all the new features visit the Windows 7 website. Over the next few months we will be covering a lot of Windows 7 news.

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