Windows Home Server bug corrupts iTunes, Zune, lots of other apps
By Nilay Patel 
posted Feb 21st 2008 11:57AM
posted Feb 21st 2008 11:57AM
Uh-oh -- it looks like the nasty Windows Home Server bug that corrupts data affects quite a few more apps than Microsoft initially let on. The company's just updated the WHS support note to include reports of data corruption when using iTunes, the Zune software, WinAmp, WMP 11, Photoshop, and a host of other applications -- and the problem's expanded in scope as well, now affecting files saved to the server in addition to files edited on the server. That basically makes WHS useless as of right now -- if you can't trust your data on it, there's no point -- so let's hope there's a fix on the way.[Via wegotserved]
A good example of why it rarely pays to be an early adopter.
Very true. I would have to disagree with the post though... Since this actually corrupts your data, this situation would have to actually be clasified as WORSE than useless.
Are there any earlier adopters for this?
The official knowledge base article at Microsoft has also been updated recently, meaning Microsoft have acknowledged the issue (again):
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/946676/en-us?spid=12624
"As of right now"?
The lost page of Microsoft children's book smash hit... Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House?
"Mommy, why is there a server in the house?"
"To corrupt your personal data sweetheart."
How do you tell a corrupt Zune from a healthy one?
Bunch of idiots. It's been 2 months since the problem was reported, and they STILL haven't been able to fix it :(
That's pretty much how Microsoft "works".
linux is looking better and better... come ON microsoft are they just trying to lose all they've got?
These type of issues are very hard to fix, I assume that Microsoft probably have a large team working hard on this because it is a major issue, so if they have yet to yield a result it maybe they can't work out what is causing it.
So you're saying it's very hard to fix what is the MAIN PURPOSE of the product--backing up files and keeping them safe?
Yet millions of file servers all over the earth are storing files just fine....
Add file servers to web browsers on Bill Gates' list of "very hard things to do."
I am not saying that the issue should be accepted, I am just saying that the issue is being caused by something they can't pin down.
I am sure if they had found a solution they would have released it. The last thing MS needs is a File Server that doesn't work. In a perfect world this would have been discovered before launch, but we know how great MS product testing is.
My point is that there are probably hundreds of protocols and file storage techniques all over the web. A lot of them are even open source BSD. Why does Microsoft feel the need to rewrite the book (again) on something so simple?
This is why I dislike Microsoft's open source fight. There are plenty of tried and true methods, but they have to go and rewrite them to try to make more money off it.
I LOVE my HP media sever , but What the hell i have 4 TB of Media on it ... If it loses it i will jump off my house
Yep, I had to kill my custom WHS box because of this issue. When MS resolves this issue, I'll bring it back online.
I have been using WHS for 3 months now with about 3TB of used space and It has been solid as a rock on my repurposed Dell XPS. It's a shame other people are having these problems. I love mine and it's really a great idea. Before HWS I still had a server, but I used like 10 different programs running in the system tray to get the same functionality.
Yikes.
While i'm sure the whole "haha windows suxors" conversation would be a blast, i'm really just feeling bad for anyone who is using WHS right now. :(
Hopefully MS gets on top of this and squashes the bug pronto.
To clarify, with another silly analogy:
i'm happy to make fun of your crappy Ford Explorer any day of the week, but when news comes out that tires are exploding and killing people... you get the point.
Great analogy, I hope this doesn't affect too many people.
To continue your analogy, how many of those affected by the Explorer/Firestone issues do you think are still using Ford products today? And how many people NOT affected have avoided Ford (or just the Explorer) because of this.
I wonder if any of those same effects will happen in this scenario.
Dude, you're killing our hate high here with all your love and Kumbaya!
Another quality product from Microsoft. Funny how other OSs have
provided these services for years, and when Microsoft gets around to
trying it out, they manage to screw it up. Great job, guys.
OK, I'll bite. Name one OS that has the features and ease of use that WHS offers.
In before flame war.
Weird....it got posted down below...sorry about that.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Oh, come on.
File sharing, remote desktop service, RAID, centralized backup, file indexing for speedy lookups, media streaming? Let's see....
FreeBSD, any flavor of Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris...basically all of Unix-based systems in popular usage.
Ease of use is a subjective attribute. In my opinion, those features are easy to use on all the systems I mentioned...well, Solaris can be annoying sometimes...err, all the time. You still have to tell the box what to do, whether or not it has a pretty picture surrounding the letters."
scooby, that killing your media thing is a helluva 'feature'. just sayin...
Windows 2000 and above support everything WHS does
Most modern flavors of linux make it relatively painless to make/use shares
The only thing going for WHS is the nice backup feature for the whole network.
Grab an old computer, put a modern OS on it and you have the same features save for the hand holding wizards.
Please show me another OS that offers the features of WHS with it's ease of use.
# Centralized Backup -
# Health Monitoring -
# File Sharing -
# Printer Sharing -
# Previous Versions -
# Headless Operation -
# Remote administration -
# Remote Access Gateway -
# Media Streaming -
# Data redundancy -
# Extensibility through Add-Ins -
"Ease of use is a subjective attribute." That's a cop out. Brain surgery is easy to a brain surgeon. Boy everybody should know how to do that then.
@mufdvr3669
OS X 10.5 server does all the things Windows Home Server does, well, apart from the data corruption bit..
So I could buy a mac and use it without a screen and add hard drives to it where it would pool them together and back up all my other computers while acting as software raid? I could also use that one computer to act as a media server for all my other computers and access over the internet?
I know it can be done on Mac and Linux, not without installing all kinds of other apps and hacking it though.
It's not a bug, its a feature.
Can someone clue me in as to where this saying comes from? I get it, I just don't know how it originated...
More specifically, it takes files that may have viruses or trojans and corrupts them to the point where the viruses/trojans no longer function.
Really it's a safety issue. They are just looking out for your best interests.
-- Adapted from Dilbert.
If it's any consolation, this only applies to multi-HD setups. If you only have one hard drive on your WHS server then you won't have the problem. Obviously most WHS users intend to use more than one drive, but I wouldn't say WHS is useless... for now anyway.
You've gotta be fucking kidding. It's bad enough that I've notice some photos I have saved on the thing are now corrupt, but months have gone by without a fix. 3 months later and the damn thing is still balancing. Great idea, typical Microsoft quality control.
All of this has been known for the past few months. How is this news now? You're only sensationalizing this by saying different application names when the truth is it doesn't matter which application as any who have an open handle on a file on WHS can experience this behavior.
Because MS just updated the article with new apps/info.
Oh, come on.
File sharing, remote desktop service, RAID, centralized backup, file indexing for speedy lookups, media streaming? Let's see....
FreeBSD, any flavor of Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris...basically all of Unix-based systems in popular usage.
Ease of use is a subjective attribute. In my opinion, those features are easy to use on all the systems I mentioned...well, Solaris can be annoying sometimes...err, all the time. You still have to tell the box what to do, whether or not it has a pretty picture surrounding the letters.
To be fair, this bug only applies to shared folders, i.e., if you are sharing a folder from another PC to the WHS, and edit files from the shared folder on the WHS.
Engadget should have stated this clearly in the article, instead of making it vague and starting the hate and flame wars.
That would be journalism. Instead a 'yellow journalblog' like engagdget would rather pick and choose headlines to hype up an easily avoidable issue.
And then the typical blog chatter would rather blast these issues than understand the situation where they would pop up.
If I had that amount of data corrupted by my server software, regardless of the vendor, I'd have an awfully bad taste in my mouth about using that vendor's server product again, whether they claim to have fixed it or not. Once burned...
Linux is free, and there's plenty of canned distributions out there specifically meant for building a home fileserver. Very little to no configuration needed, and they can be set up with a web browser.
Really, anyone who pays money to run Windows on a *fileserver* deserves the pain they get. Windows has its place for business apps and games, but for servers, Linux and BSD are king.
Ok, for those experienced ones, I just got a Dell SC440 server, 750gig hdd, 4gigs RAM, and would like to do something similar to what WHS does but using Linux. Any suggestions out there? Thanks.
I'm not going to say I'm experienced, and I have never used WHS, so keep this in mind, but I did something similar by setting up Debian on an ancient computer (Pent 3 - 512mb ram). The computer sychs with the media files on my main computer backing everything up, it's also connected to my stereo so that I can play my music files. I use a nokia 770 tablet as a remote control (using VNC). If the computer were newer I'd also use it to play and record video. It will share files or backup files from any computer on the network and if I wanted to I'm sure I could set it up to serve my files to anywhere on the internet.
I'm not going to promise this is easy to do (it wasn't), but I found a lot of help on forums and I'm kind of a newbie. All this from a computer that barely runs win98.
I suggest using openfiler easy setup and lots of options. Software based raid plus it has drivers for just about every aftermarket raid card.
From the article:
"do not edit any files directly on the WHS from your application".
Seems like an easy workaround. I only use my WHS as a scheduled backup server, print server and media streamer, I guess that's why I haven't had issues? Is anyone getting corruption purely from backing up?
Hey, good thing I didn't build my custom Home server yet... I was about to a few weeks ago...
lol... my unopened whs box w/ software has been sitting in my basement for a while now, too... guess where it's going to stay for even longer!
Currently running WHS with 6 hard disks attached... I loaded all of my media onto the storage using robocopy. Been running for 2 months with no problems so far. Hopefully it'll be fixed before that ever happens *knock on wood*.
Sorry to be slightly off-topic but does anyone know if it is possible to map a network drive representing my WHS (or particular shared folders on it like Music) to a Vista Business machine when I am not on my home network (i.e. at work)? I love having access to files wherever I have an internet connection but I HATE that you have to access them one at a time through a web interface. I'd love to have the WHS just appear as another drive or folder and use the standard windows explorer shell to manipulate the files (drag and drop, copy multiple files, etc.)
Thanks,
Jason
Yes, it's not good that this bug exists at all. But in all fairness, it only affects WHS servers with more than one disk drive. A WHS server with a sigle 500gb drive, for example, will not see this problem.
As to Jason's question about mapping over the network, you might do better posting your question at the WHS community forum at:
http://forums.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver/default.aspx?siteid=50
-kw
[SBS MVP]
The problem with MS is that they don't really employ any beta testers. They have programmers and alpha testers. The consumers are the beta testers - saves money. So when you see an MS product going through RC1 and RC2, that's just the Alpha testing. Once the early adopters purchase it, then it's going through beta. That's why we get the little pop ups asking us to report the problem when something crashes. SP1 is actually the real RC1, SP2 is RC2, and SP3 is Gold.
I'm kind of sick of the Windows/Linux argument. Each has serious strengths and weaknesses. Part of the problem with this argument is that you have to look at each operating system differently. Windows is a product. You pay for it and you expect support. For the most part, Linux isn't a product (yes, there are many exceptions, including the new eee pc's system). You get it for free and it was largely coded by people who are doing it because they care about creating a system that works for what they want it to do. Linux is really a project more than a product. Windows users ask if it's going to be as easy to do as with Windows. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In this case I would doubt it (although I haven't used WHS, I'm guessing it's much easier to set up than a Linux server). You're going to have to set it up for yourself, but there's going to be a lot of people on forums to help you. You might complain about this, but in the end, whether you get it to work or not, you won't have paid anything for it because it's a community project, not a product.
#1) Microsoft strongly cautions about messing with your HDD on the WHS. I this is probably when you edit a file on it rather than your PC and the copy it over (thru automated backups or directly over to shared folder). This is because WHS is not a RAID Server but is more like the Drobo where anysize drive can be added or removed at any moment. Hopefully Microsoft will get this fixed, but for now as stated do not directly edit files on the Data partition (shared folders etc).
#2) Now I have the eval version. I would gladly take a free Linux distro Home Server that just installs and is done. It need to backup everything on my computer, NOT USE RAID but use HDD of ANY size. It needs to come with a restore CD, so that if my computer fails I can just insert the CD and have it restore perfectly from the backup. It also needs to stream music, video, and pictures and have shares.
and of course when Quicktime 7.4 release crippled all adobe softwares for months, engadget didnt even say a word about it!
thanks engadget
I've lost all trust in WHS.
Near loss of 16,000+ photos and program installation files corrupted. And this is just the 2ND TIME FOR THIS.
After the first corruption I reformatted and reloaded. Carefull not to install ANY Add-Ins and keep the system to a minimum. Only downloaded all patches and drivers to be up to date.
Then copied all photos back, setup PC backups...and let the system sit with not real usage. This past weekend after 1-2 weeks...photos are now corrupted AGAIN.
You may have not experienced any problems...but I would not trust it without your data being on another system.
Some data was recovered from the WHS duplication files I found buried...others were still corrupted. Don't think duplication will save you...it may even be the probelm. That is my next test...no duplication to see how long the data is good.
Hey mufdvr3669
have a look at this http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/ what extra software?????????????????