Windows® Home Server Bible

Chapter 22. Restoring Backups

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Opening backups

• Browsing files

• Restoring folders and files

• Managing device drivers

• Using the Restore CD

Now that you are using Windows Home Server to create backups for all of your home computers, the peace of mind that comes from having your valuable files protected is invaluable. With your Windows Home Server backups, you now have a way to recover your computers from just about anything. You can now remedy everything from a single accidentally deleted file up to a catastrophic hardware failure.

As you saw in Chapter 21, the Console's View Backups and Backup Details dialogs each have a button that gives you access to the files in a backup. In this chapter, we show you how to browse these files, as well as how to recover them.

Most importantly, we show you how you can use the Restore CD to recover from a disaster such as a catastrophic hard drive failure, which would necessitate a complete restore from your most recent backup.

Finally, we show you how to recover the device drivers that Windows Home Server includes with each backup, and use them when restoring your computer by some means other than the Restore CD.

Viewing Backed Up Files

When we discuss the View Backups and Backup Details dialogs in Chapter 21, we make a passing reference to the Open button on both dialogs that allows you to view and restore files from each backup. Here, we address this Open button further.

Opening backups

If a backup only includes a single volume (drive) from the ...