Friday, 9/11, I call @aelerelean to tell him my evening plans changed again. The rain (the precious, precious rain) has been falling almost steadily for a week now. 9/4 it rained out our first game in the tournament and made it unbearably muggy for the rest of the tournament, and it rained out 3 practices. Ugh. Anyway, @aelerelean said his computer wouldn’t boot. Fuck. He cleaned it out with some canned air but still no luck. I said I’d look at it when I got home. Yeah. The boot disk wouldn’t…boot. This boot disk was a terabyte Seagate Barracuda. Not even 6 months old. I used the disk tools and it failed. Everywhere. Short test, Long test, then it wouldn’t talk to the disk tool. We headed to the first of many trips to Fry’s for a new harddrive and an SATA enclosure. Get home, slap disk in enclosure, mount it to my computer. My computer wouldn’t boot. OH FUCK. I let it sit for a spell. It finally came up but the culprit was that goddamned disk. It eventually showed up, but not long enough to pull any data off. Fortunately this just held Windows and bookmarks. But I realized with growing horror that I had the same make/model disk…currently hold half a TB of stuff. Stuff that took lots of time to aquire. Shit shit shit.

Next morning, I get woken by my phone getting text messages. Text messages telling me that the game was cancelled. Go go Austin weather. What to do with the day? Play Arkham Asylum? Or Rock Band Beatles? Oh hell no. Computer shit! Yay for computer shit! Trip number 2 to Fry’s. This is when @aelerelean said he wanted a backup solution. Something that could possibly back up his machine on a schedule. So, I mentioned Windows Home Server. We could build it easily since it runs on crap hardware (we have plenty of crap hardware!!), we just needed a case and a power supply! SWEET! So we get a cheap case, and a power supply and we’re good to go!

Or not. I got access to my MSDN account Saturday. I scan the list only to discover…no Home Server. Shit. I do some google-fu and see that we could just get an off the shelf box for $399 complete with a terabyte drive (woefully small for all the crap we have). I hmm and haw about it, not wanting to drop more money, when my eyes wander over to my other machine. A big ass SOHO server case with a shit-ton of bays. It’s only purpose lately was to serve files to the PS3. That’s it. I scan the drives. I HAD A COMPLETELY EMPTY 400GB DRIVE. Just sitting there, doing nothing! Well fuck. Why build YET ANOTHER MACHINE when I have a perfectly good box already running? So, it was BACK to Fry’s to return the power supply and case and to pick up Windows Home Server (the first Windows operating system I have outright bought. Ever.) and another TB drive.

@aelerelean’s machine was doing its install thing while I started in on 1) copying my stuff from the “oh shit, it’s gonna die any minute now” drive and 2) installing WHS. Installing WHS is simple, just like XP or anything else, except there are less options. You don’t need them. Although, I had a bit of a heart attack when after all the “hey, 30 minutes until I’m done” screens, it booted to a desktop, ran some other updates, then went back to “39 minutes until I’m done” but for Windows 2003. Eek! What? Why? Where? Oh, WHS is built on 2003. Okay. So, installed and ready to go, I put the console disk into my desktop. It said “Looking for the home server.” Then “downloading updates from the home server” and “done.” That’s it. I configured one thing: when to start backups. The next day, my machine was backed up automagically. @aelerelean’s…..he…has a lot of shit. A lot. See, WHS will backup EVERY DISK ATTACHED TO YOUR MACHINE. Including your three-quarter full external terabyte drive. Can we saw “slow as shit”? Yesssss. Solution? tell WHS not to back it up. 8+ hours (I didn’t let it finish), to 4 hours for initial backup. @aelerelean’s next task is to go through that drive and delete shit.

All in all, I like WHS. Adding a drive is drop dead simple. Power off, add drive, power on. What I would like to do is get a front plate thing that makes your unused bays into a hot swappable drive array. Ooooohhhh, that would be nice.

But goddamn, I am sick of fucking around with computer parts. I was so very close to just getting the damn Acer easyShare.

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