What To Do When You Go On The Road or Your Parents Don’t Want a Windows Home Server Of Their Own?

February 16, 2010 by 19 Comments

We all love how WHS backs up the computers in our home network.

But what about when you go on the road or your parents don’t want a WHS of their own?

Well here is my story;

I decided to install Windows 7 Pro on my parent’s computer and laptop over the weekend.  I was pretty busy studying for my brokers test so they dropped them off, anyway  after I completed the installs I opted to add their pc and laptop to the WHS and back them up, I also added Hamachi  2.0.1.66 to both of their systems,  I already had it on the server so  I just  joined there computer to my Hamachi network then I sent them home, once they were back home and on the net  I  confirmed there Hamachi was running , I saw their machines on my network and in the console  and so I did a manual backup even though I did one at my place
this first backup  from their home took a little bit but it did finish, the second one took less than 10 minutes to complete WOW, then I had  them streaming music thru there media center add-in from my WHS how cool :-)

Console

backup view

Side notes: 1) I used to use Team Viewer to RDP into their system to fix things now I can use windows RDP

2) As you can see I need MS to add more users to WHS, hint, hint :-)

WELCHWERKS

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Media Center, Windows, Windows Home Server V1
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About welchwerks

This post was written by who has written 3 posts on Connected Digital World. Greg Welch aka WELCHWERKS A Real Estate Agent with a passion for WHS, Media Center and Home Automation projects, I am MCP,A+ certified also enjoy Building systems such as Phase Change and Peltier , although now I am on the green bandwagon low power 24/7 systems and alike.
View all posts by welchwerks →

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  • http://usingwindowshomeserver.com Andrew Edney

    Hope the test went well?

    Andrew

  • welchwerks

    I have a lot of studying to do before next friday, thanks ill need the luck :)

    • Chuck Arbogast

      welchwerks,

      Is there any way you could provide a tutorial to set this up on my WHS and my Mom's computer. I'm sure I can install it but not sure how to set it up to work to be able to back up via WHS console.

      Thanks,

      Chuck

  • B

    Cool but I also would like to know how its set up?

  • welchwerks

    Chuck, I will do my best

    1. For Server

    a. Download Hamachi 2.0.1.66 hint: (Google Hamachi 2.0.1.66 )it

  • Chuck Arbogast

    Thanks for the guide. I think I follow most of it but I have a few more questions. It appears your guides says that my Mom's computer would physically need to be in my local network when I initially set this up. Is that correct? Is there any way to do this all remotely?

    Other than that, I think I could follow this.

    Thanks,

    Chuck

  • welchwerks

    yes i believe it is Necessary to start the first backup locally on your network.

    give backup a try, also hamanchi you can install from anywhere

    You can try the initial backup from afar but when i tried it would fail about 25% every time

    make sure her computer wont go to sleep on you and you might want to Up her internet speed for a month, i use cox cable we can choose 256 up to 3mg upload speeds

    if you get stuck , ill try and help

  • todd

    this is exciting. Do you think you back up a WHS server like this. I have 2 WHS servers at different sites and would love to back them up over the net.

    What brokers license? Series 7? That is what I do for a living.

    Good Luck!

  • Scott

    Do you know how to set hamanchi up remotely? I have the same problem, parents always needing computer help and being able to remote desktop into their computer would be a huge help. I would love to attempt setting up back up remotely, if anyone gets that to work, please post details!

  • http://fasthair.blogspot.com/2009/03/youve-been-served.html fasthair

    Welchwerks,

    Hamachi is pretty cool and is a great way to connect a PC that is not part of your LAN to your WHS. Before I got a WHS for my shop I wanted to back up my work desktop but I didn

  • welchwerks

    Thanks todd,

    its Real Estate Brokers test,Las Vegas,NV

    should be a little easier that your stock brokers lic.?

    Thanks fasthair,

    For bringing up the restore issue,everyone take not of this !!

    and as for the music it works great

    MOM uses a 6gb download thru cox cable, i am working on her streaming my movies soon, now that will be a test, for my upload speed, when do the DOCsis 3.0 router come out.? wink,Ceton,wink

    (hey how did that get in there?)

    Scott,

    first download the version mentioned above, then install it on any machine creating a server name,and password.

    then install on the second machine remotely if that is the case. and connect to the name you chose when installing on the first.

    hope you have better luck on the remote initial backup, as fasthair and I can attest to probability of it timming out

    but you will be able to connect at least

    after running http://servername:55000 on connecter on remote PC, you could do all this remotley for her using TEAMVEIWER mentioned above

    let us know. there is lots of help on nthis forum

    Hi Todd,

    I hope you are refuring to just the small shared folders on one server being backed up to the other , although you might try using DBDD or synctoy thru Hamanchi

    DBDD is a WHS add-in that backs up specific shared folders to an exrenal drive

    and if that external drive were a mapped drive on another WHS (thanks to Hamanchi) at a remote location

    o.k im rambling, but give it a try

    post if you get stuck

    review Tim Deleo's topic on Synctoy

    DBDD download at this great website http://www.mediasmartserver.net/add-ins/

  • Scott

    I had never heard of teamviewer, while reading their info it says they have a server version. Their info also states you can set up a vpn using the software. Would this be able to work in place of hamachi?

  • welchwerks

    i did notice that, but am not sure that it loads as a service ,worth looking into, teamveiwer works great.for the family IT job.

  • welchwerksw

    Hi Todd, check this out

    backing up SBS 2008 to whs

    http://mswhs.com/2010/02/17/backup-sbs-to-whs/

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  • Colin Hodgson

    Good write-up! Have been using this since Beta days and works fine.

    The easy way to do a restore, (which I've had to do some time ago), is to use one of your local machines, attach a suitable HDD and then do a local restore to that drive, then send that off to the remote site.

    Easy, quick and reliable – as long as the other end can change the drives.

  • Josh

    I have been doing this for a while now, and the only thing I have to correct is that if you are willing to leave your computer on for long enough, the initial backup will work over Hamachi. I have done the initial backup over Hamachi twice now, with a 100GB drive taking 48 hours, and a 30gb taking 4 hours, being limited by my home network

  • welchwerks

    I think its time to get the rest of my family backed up,;)

    or at least my daughters laptop when she is off to college

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