Many, Many Thanks and a couple of questions

[TR3 Driver]

First, an apology for the length of this post, but I feel as if I need to offer many thank you's to a bunch of people on this forum.

I began by lurking and reading what seemed to be a million <grin> posts in my quest to move up from an old series 2 TIVO to the ability to record in HD and then watch the content on more than one TV. After about a month of reading, I decided to download the trial software, order an HDHR, and one extender and set everything up on my desktop computer and try to make it work. Knowing that I only have a basic knowledge of operating systems, networking, etc., I was somewhat hesitant to make the plunge, but hey, what the heck. WOW! Let me say that setting that small test setup up was much simpler than I ever expected.

I played with it only a short time before I knew that SageTV was going to be the answer I was looking for. Then I decided to jump in all the way and build a total system for my home - WHS Server, 2 HDHR, 1 HDPVR, wired gigabit network, and four HD200 extenders. I have experienced the same pains that many others have: Learning a new operating system (WHS); Understanding .scn and .frq files and how to get the tuners working and receiving the correct guide data; Getting the firewire channel changing working on my STB- HDPVR combo.

Has it been simple?? No, but for every problem/question I came up on, I found the answer right here. The input of many people has been invaluable. I hesitate to name names for fear of leaving some out - just know that if you post here your work is appreciated.

I now have my system up and working just the way I imagined it. Recorded TV, streaming videos, DVD's and music from my server, and all of the cool add-ins that people have created make me look like some kind of AVS guru. It couldn't have been done without this forum!!

I just had to say thanks, but typically, I have a couple of other questions:

1. I started with the trial version of WHS, but now have my full-blown copy and need to install it. Are there any tricks/ suggestions on how to accomplish this??

2. Is there any way to back up the system drive on my Home Server? The automatic backup of the networked computers is fabulous, but I would love to have that same security for the server itself now that Sage and all the other components are set up and working properly.

Again, THANK YOU to all who have helped through their posts on this forum.

[Polypro]

Welcome to the addiction!

1. I never loaded the trial of WHS...can you not just enter the retail key somewhere? You can re-install the server, which won't touch your stored data...but you will lose any programs and drivers you installed (think fomat/ c).

2. I've never needed to image C:\ but the imaging programs could probably do it fine...the caveat would be that the Tombstones that WHS uses to point to data, are supposedly changing often and could lead to some data loss.

I'd scour MS's WHS forum for both of these questions.

P

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by Polypro

Welcome to the addiction!

1. I never loaded the trial of WHS...can you not just enter the retail key somewhere? You can re-install the server, which won't touch your stored data...but you will lose any programs and drivers you installed (think fomat/ c).

2. I've never needed to image C:\ but the imaging programs could probably do it fine...the caveat would be that the Tombstones that WHS uses to point to data, are supposedly changing often and could lead to some data loss.

I'd scour MS's WHS forum for both of these questions.

P

2.) If you want to make a backup to migrate to a new system then it will be fine as long as you do not bootup the OS on the old system after imaging and before migrating.
If you have only 1 drive, you will be fine.
If you run a multi drive setup, it will NOT work. Not only will you get data loss but your OS will pretty much be hosed. You will get critical drive errors galore that can not be repaired.