CES: Microsoft's serving platter for content

As I mentioned earlier, Microsoft introduced a new product at Bill Gates' keynote event on Sunday. It's Windows Home Server, a platform for a network-connected box containing a huge amount of hard-drive storage. The idea is that the box will store all the content — music, pictures, video — a household wants to share among its PCs and media players, as well as a managed backup of all users' documents and data files.

Since then, more details have been disclosed, both through official Microsoft channels, and via blog postings from some of the WHS developers.

The HP Media Smart Server (pictured) will be the first WHS product to market, scheduled for release in the second half of this year. The best guess I could get on its price was "about $500," so we're talking about much more than a backup drive. This is a product for a multi-computer household.

The Windows Home Server operating system, which is still in beta, is slated for release June 22. Unlike all other versions of Windows, it's not meant to be accessed through the usual keyboard, mouse and monitor; in fact, there isn't even a way to connect them. If needed, the user configures the server through a web interface, called the Windows Home Server Console, similar to the way routers and some backup drives are configured.

So, why would a household want a home server? Simply put, it's a solution for a number of needs common to a computer-centric lifestyle. Potentially, Windows Home Server will:

• Completely back up the entire hard drives of every Windows XP or Vista computer in the house, automatically, every day 
• Allow you to restore anything at any time, even an entire computer's hard drive 
• Allow you to get back previous versions of documents that were changed 
• Let you access all of your files from any computer, inside or outside your home 
• Let you access your home computers from outside the home 
• Allow you to expand its capacity and capabilities as needed 
• Check your computers for security shortcomings

The sophistication of Windows Home Server is evident in some of its design goals, For example, if several copies of the same data are saved on different computers, Home Server will only back it up once on the server, and keep track of the various versions, not just by date, but by originating computer.

If a disaster happens, such as your computer's hard drive failing completely, you can replace the hard drive and boot up the computer with a special restore CD, and it will connect to the Home Server with a simple wizard that will restore it from the backup. That would have saved me dozens of hours several times in my past.

Of course, at any time, you can also access the Windows Home Server Console from any home computer and restore individual files and folders. Moving files between the Home Server and the computers is as simple as dragging and dropping, as if the Home Server was your computer's own hard drive.

The Server uses a multiple-drive configuration that is "fault-tolerant", letting you replace one of its drives that has failed without losing any data. It monitors your network to ensure that everything is running smoothly. It makes sure that backups are being completed successfully and as scheduled, that all Server hard drives have enough space to ensure two copies of everything, and even checks the security status of all the computers on the network, and lets you monitor the status from the Windows Home Server Console.

Users you've given permission can access the Home Server from any networked computer, or even access it remotely using a web browser from anywhere on the Internet. Remote users can download and upload files in shared folders, so it's a great, free way to share pictures and other creative content with friends and family. Home Server can send music, photos and video to an Xbox 360 or any digital media receiver on your home network that can use the Windows Media Connect service in XP and Vista. Playing back any of that media on any of your computers is just as easy.

I won't bore you with more technical detail, but as you might have figured, this storage device is a leap ahead of any other network-connected backup I was able to find at CES. We'll be covering backup solutions periodically on ConsumerReports.org, so you will be seeing more on this later this year.

— Dean Gallea, program leader in computer testing