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    Hello,

    I hope you can help me. I have just purchased an Acer Aspire Easy Store H340 which runs Microsoft's Windows home server.

    The main reason for this purchase is because over the years the build up of media files has meant that backing up and managing these has become nearly impossible using external hard disks, NAS devices and network shares etc. As any kind of operation involving copying media directories over my network would take days to complete.

    I was delighted with the new server when it arrived, particularly with a front loading USB port and a one click backup USB button. This worked fantastically with 200 GB of music copied from my external hard disk to the server in the space of a couple of hours.

    But then my problems started -- I started to move the music from the default directory on the server to a music folder ALSO on the server. I was presented with a standard Windows copying dialogue box saying that the transfer is taking place at 2 MB per second and the estimated time to transfer is x number of days --AAAAAARrrrrrrggggg!!!! This is precisely the problem I had originally when I was using network attached storage devices, portable hard disks etc. The copying print process is taking place on my local machine sending instructions although the network (in some way) therefore the copying procedure is hundreds of times slowerthan when copying on the local hard disk

    AND of course the inevitable happened halfway through the copying procedure Windows Explorer crashed on my local computer leaving me with exactly the same problem as I always faced -- what files have been copied? What can I delete?  are some of the files corrupted? 

    In addition to the 200 gigs of music I also have terabytes of videos, arranging all of these in some sort of order using the remote method is completely unpractical and in fact renders the purchase of a home server completely useless.

    My question is very simple. How can I use the server locally to copy files from one directory to another directory.  so that I am not left with file corruption is every time there is a network failure or local computer crash. --- In addition to this I can not wait for 3-4days every time I want to copy a directory!!!!

    I look forward to hearing from you.

    Best regards

    Jim
    Thursday, March 11, 2010 12:22 PM

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    Copying locally on the server isn't supported; you need desktop access to do so, and there's no supported way to access the desktop. By design, you're intended to do exactly what you're doing. It's slow because (as you've guessed) your client computer copies from one share on the server to another by copying the data from share A to the client computer, and then from the client computer to share B. So the data has to make two trips across your network.

    The one thing that's most likely to help is to improve the performance of your network. If you have a 100 Mbit network (it sounds like that's what you have now, from the speeds you quote), see if you can upgrade to gigabit speeds; this may require nothing more than a network switch that supports it. If you're using a wireless network, consider running some cable, since wireless networks aren't as reliable and don't perform as well as wired networks.
    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Thursday, March 11, 2010 12:34 PM
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    wow,

    That makes this unit pretty useless to me.

    I am using gigabyte network (although I suspect there is an issue with my router just running at 100Mbit but that's a different problem) and from my initial tests it looks like the transfer the 2.6 Tb of media data is going to take weeks (if not months) of transfer time!  It also means that I must keep a desktop machine connected constantly to the network, switched on and cross my fingers that neither the network nor the local machine will fail or need rebooted during this time.  What happens for example if an important Windows update is installed overnight and an automatic restart takes place?

    In fact there are more problems than this, due to the nature of my business I am often doing network tests etc which means that I must regularly restart my router and/or computer.  I can't have a situation where I'm committed to 3 days copying across a directory to the server!

    Thanks for your help.

    I can't believe that I am the only person who finds this situation completely unsatisfactory?

    Best regards

    Jim
    Thursday, March 11, 2010 2:40 PM
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    2 MB/s sounds like 54g speeds - try connecting the two machines using a cable.

    By the sounds of it you know a bit about computers so you can always remote desktop into the machine and copy from \\localhost\share1 to \\localhost\share2 - you'll hear it's unsupported but Windows Home Server it targetted at the novice so it has to be said really.

    Also I don't quite understand how you think Windows Home Server on a network is going to be magnitudes faster than using a NAS device - WHS brings a lot more than a NAS does but it can't accelerate your network.
    --
    Thursday, March 11, 2010 5:29 PM