Think of a home server as your ultimate backup solution for movies, music, data, and photos.  With most of our day spent online, data hoarding is an unconscious habit. Learn how to setup and build your own windows server.  As we all know, digital media comes with the dangers of wear, tear and crash.

• Don’t miss: Reusing an Old PC as a Server

Backing it all up in the cloud can be somewhat impractical. But why look towards the cloud when we have a viable solution on the ground – an easy to construct Windows Home Server.  A Windows Home Server is not only a backup failsafe but can also become an interface to stream your content over your small home network. The how and why is covered by this tutorial.

The Best Things about Windows Home Server

• Easy backups – Easy data redundancy through backups for 10 Windows PCs can be configured. WHS syncs one copy of each file disregarding the number of copies in multiple computers. Data backup can be made selective for individual drives or specific folders.
• Shared access – Create user accounts and give shared access to your friends and family over the network.
• Remote access – Remote access the WHS over a network address using the in-built Console Connector client software.
• Stream to any device -The Windows Media Connect UPnP server software allows any compatible digital media receiver (like the Xbox 360, PS3, or Windows Media Player 11) stream movies and music off the home network.
• Extend and expand – Add or replace storage devices seamlessly as WHS automatically formats new storage devices and treats all drives as a single unified storage space.
• The Hardware - The Maximum PC tutorial recommends building your own as it will be more customized and you can also scavenge parts from old computers. Here’s the hardware list.

Total Cost: $860

Building your Home Server:

Step 1: Prep the case

The Antec 200 is a budget case with six 3.5-inch drive bays and easy expandability with an external easy-swap SATA bay and an adjustable fan speed switch.

2. Install the parts

Installing the components is about care and alignment. It should be done on static free surface. The tutorial details the steps from fixing the CPU on the motherboard to inserting the RAM modules and finally mounting the drives.  If you’ve never built a computer before, check out our beginner’s guide.

3. Wire and connect

With all the components in place, the attachment of the SATA data and power cables comes next. Wiring is all done with the plugging in the other components to the motherboard connectors and the chassis outlets.

4. Install Software

Windows Home Server can be installed using an external optical drive or a bootable Flash Drive. The installation is simple and user friendly. The basic installation is followed by networking the other PCs. The networking also involves setting up the WHS Connector password on client PCs. This is the time to install all the latest updates and patches for WHS.

The Settings console is where most of WHM management takes place. Configuring the WHS settings involves scheduling backups, setting up user accounts, deciding on the shared folders for media streaming, checking out the Disk Management features and installing and managing third-party add-ins. Here are 5 essential add-ins available which make WHS do a whole lot more.

5. Accessing Your Server

A server is typically not stand alone. There are four ways to remote access and manage your server.

1. Manage it from the Console software
2. Browse shared folders from Windows Explorer by typing in the network URL.
3. Using the homeserver.com domain for remote access.
4. Using Remote Desktop in the client PC to access WHS’s desktop.

6. Tweaking for Maximum Performance

Optimize the performance by tweaking settings for speed, automatic syncing, handling video formats and other enhancements. A home built server based backup solution can be designed around your needs. As this tutorial shows, it is not too difficult. Alternative home server options like HP MediaSmart LX195 and Acer easyStore H340 are also worth a look. But all home server options provide one common denominator – peace of mind.

Are you thinking of setting up your own server based backup solution? What are the specs you are looking at?

If the idea is appealing, take a look at some of our previous posts about data backups.

• How to: Back Up Your Hard Drive For Free
• How to: Automatic Hard Drive Back Up
• Automatically back up your files

If anything can go wrong, it will. This means although it can be a bit tedious, we always need to backup our computers. Data backup is not only good practice; it’s an essential one. It may be a spanking new computer or a jalopy for the digital world, data backup is as important as a virus scan or keeping a firewall.

Think of all the files accumulated over the years…one snafu and oops it’s gone. Good news is that data backup solutions can fill that gap for you. It’s out there…it’s easy and importantly, it’s free. One of the backup solutions is built right into your operating system, some of it is on the web and some can be provided by a kind friend.

The Basics:

The easiest and most accessible backup is obviously on another networked computer. Simple file sharing between two computers makes it a routine of copy and paste. Configuration is slightly different among the different systems (Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7). Native Mac backups or with a PC are also pretty much covered.

Manual backups are like heavy duty lifting. Backup utilities like IdleBackup (Windows) and SilverKeeper (Mac OS X) automatically sync folders for you, relieving a lot of the work load.

1. Simple File Storage Sites

Cloud computing is upon us and so why not take a look at some online solutions. Of course, you can go for full system backups which are available at a premium. But we did mention ‘Free’ in the title. A lot of online file storage companies’ offer ample space for free though falling short of complete system backups. Backing up your stuff online thus calls for cherry-picking essential files and safekeeping them online.

Here are a few in the queue:

• Windows Live Skydrive: A total of 25GB for free with a per file size limit of 50MB.
• File Factory: 100GB of free storage with a 300MB file limit. Downer could be the slow speeds.
• Dropbox: For smaller needs – offers 2GB of free storage with neat file syncing features.
• Mozy: 2GB of free storage but with a handy Windows client that makes uploading a cinch.
• Orbit Files: 6GB but with limited choices.

2. Documents, Photos, Music and Videos

Yes, some of these websites do double over for file storage needs. You probably use them every day but never looked at them from this angle.

-  Docs: For your documents, why go any further than the trio of Google Docs, Office Live and Zoho.

- Pics: For your photos, make your online accounts with Flickr, Snapfish, Picasa, Photobucket or Facebook.

-  Tunes: For music, MP3Tunes, File Factory and Deezer sound really cool.

- Vids: For videos, you can give YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler a shot.

The Gizmodo referred choices are aplenty and free. Just remember to do a full or a selective backup. It could be a safety net for a crash.

Check out our other posts about backing up and recovering data:

• How to: Automatic Hard Drive Back Up
• Automatically back up your files
• How to recover a Laptop Hard Drive

When was the last time you backed up your important files? Last year when your friend called in tears after the Blue Screen of Death ate his thesis?  We thought so.  Learn to set up a program called SyncBack which automatically generates password protected zip files of your important documents.

Benefits:

1. It’s free and pretty easy to use.
2. You can choose to save them to an external hard drive or upload them to an FTP server.
3. Schedule nightly, weekly, and monthly backups so you don’t have to lift a finger.

No, don’t just bookmark this post and do it later. Do it now! Before it’s too late!  If you need assistance automating backup, see a full guide to using SyncBack

Related Projects:

• How to recover dead hard drive data
• Encrypt your entire hard drive
• Turn a dead hard drive into a grinder

Legend has it that if you put a dead hard drive in a freezer, pull it out and plug it in, it should run long enough to recover the data. Is it true? Indeed, it seems so.

While freezing the drive for a while extends life momentarily, the real trick is to run the hard drive while it’s in the freezer. Just throw in a water tight bag first, of course. Works pretty well with other gadgets including iPod hard drives too.

Evidence:

• Two techs encounter an uncooperative drive, this is their epic recovery story.
• More stories of how freezing a hard drive brought it back from the dead.

Note, this only temporarily extends the life of the device, allowing you to recover data before it completely dies.

More Hard Drive Hacks:

1. Encrypt your Entire Hard Drive
2. Salvage Rare Magnets from a Hard Drive
3. Recover lost Hard Drive Partitions