As discussed in this thread https://www.scoobynet.com/computer-r...diy-build.html I've been looking at either a NAS type device or a WHS based device. I've finally bitten the bullet and I'm now the proud owner of one of these.

Tranquil PC Limited SQA-5H-2000

It took a few days to get here because of the Bank Holiday, but it's now plumbed in, and currently running a backup of my desktop. Probably not the most cost effective way of doing things, but in the time I was using my DIY frankenputer home build on a trial license, it just worked. No funnies, no hassle, even the missus's laptop gets backed up occasionally, which is a vast improvement.

 

It's surprising how quick you begin to rely on your WHS. We have 3 Xbox 360s in the house that stream video from the server, plus it's holding a backup copy of my brother's music.

The PC backup feature works really well. The system disk on my main PC died the other day. I put a spare hard disk in the machine, booted off the WHS recovery CD, chose the PC and the backup I wanted to restore, an hour later the PC was back up and running exactly as it was the day before. Couldn't of been easier.

If you're using it to store anything important (videos/music etc) then it's worth putting a second disk in and turning on the drive duplication. This ensures a disk failure in the server itself isn't fatal.

 

I'm shuffling all my data around to free up some space on my desktop pc, then I can move a drive into the WHS box for folder duplication. I've also got an external 1TB disk which I've configured for WHS to use as a backup drive. I'll move my iDrive client over to the WHS box to backup the really vital stuff, family photos, email etc.