Windows Home Server Beta 2
I bit the bullet and installed Windows Home Server Beta 2 on my main machine after upgrading its RAM from 512MB to 2GB. The memory made a real difference, but it was the Windows installation that really made the day. However, it wasn’t in a good way.
When I first started the installation, I knew that I was formatting my drive to install the new operating system, so I moved all of my documents onto my second hard drive so that they would stay safe. I started the installation off and the first thing I saw was a warning that data on all of ky hard drives would be erased as part of the installation. Thinking it was a mistake (as happens with betas), I carried on, only to be presented by a screen displaying all the drives to be formatted. Both my drives were there with no way of excluding any of them.
I was wondering whether there was any way out of this, and at last I decided to stop the installation, disconnect my documents hard drive and carry on. Having done this, the installer proceeded to format my main drive and install Windows Home Server on it. So far, so good.
After numerous reboots and false starts (every time I though it had finished because it displayed the Windows desktop, it would reboot again), the installation finally finished. Good, I thought. I can connect my documents drive back up and use it with the new operating system. Oh how wrong I was.
I shut down my computer and connected the drive back up, then started it again. After the operating system booted up, I went to My Computer to check the drive out. To my amazement, it wasn’t there. Not to worry, I thought. It probably hasn’t been assigned a drive letter. So I went to Disk Management to rectify this, and only then did I realise that Windows had actually formatted the documents drive as soon as I’d connected it, telling me nothing about it and using it as a backup drive for new documents (a little like software RAID).
Luckily, most of the important stuff was either backed up to DVD, on my laptop or stored at university, but everything was wiped out without confirmation. I realise this is only a beta version, but even then, shouldn’t an operating system ask before it formats one of your drives?
The moral of the story? Always keep backups, and never install Windows Home Server Beta 2 without making sure that everything is ready since it will format all of your hard drives without confirmation!