News

Windows Home Server Backup Problem Fixed

A bug that caused problems when backing up files in Windows Home Server has been fixed, according to an announcement issued by Microsoft on Wednesday.

• By Kurt Mackie
• 05/09/2008

The problem stemmed from the use of NTFS to compress files via "advanced attributes settings." Files saved in this way typically got corrupted during backups.

NTFS is Microsoft's standard file system for Windows operating systems, but it can also be used to compress individual files.

Windows Home Server users can download a fix at Microsoft's Help and Support page, which references knowledge base article 950190. However, this fix won't repair files that may have become corrupted beforehand.

The types of files that may have been corrupted include CAB, JPG, PNG, ZIP and more, according to KB 950190. The problem fixed by Microsoft stemmed from certain sections of the files actually taking up more disk space after NTFS compression was applied.

A separate problem with Windows Home Server, also associated with the NTFS file system, appears to be unresolved as yet. That problem concerns systems that use more than one hard disk, according to knowledge base article 946676.

Microsoft reported late last year that files saved or transferred using some programs could become corrupt if used on systems with more than one hard disk running Windows Home Server. The problem has not yet been resolved, but Microsoft predicted that this issue would be resolved in June of this year. Ironically, mostly of the programs listed in KB 946676 that cause the problems are made by Microsoft.