Windows Home Server may corrupt files

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 02 January 2008 01:52

Business IT - Technology

Microsoft has warned that Windows Home Server may corrupt users' files.

What are you most likely to store on a home server? For most people, digital photos are probably high on the list. They tend to be a family resource rather then personal data, they take up a lot of space, you probably don't use them particularly frequently, but it's a pain to transfer the collection whenever you buy a new computer.

Another thing about photos is that they are irreplaceable.

So Microsoft's warning that saving a file to Windows Home Server from Vista Photo Gallery or Windows Live Photo Gallery may result in corrupted data is a significant cause for concern.

According to the company, the problem surfaces when a home server is under an extreme load (eg, lots of files are being copied to it), and a user edits files already saved in a shared folder on the server using Windows Vista Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, OneNote 2003 or 2007,  Outlook 2007, Money 2007, or SyncToy 2.0 Beta. Certain non-Microsoft programs may also trigger the bug: Microsoft mentions user reports of issues with Quicken and QuickBooks, as well as unspecified torrent applications.

Until a fix is delivered, Microsoft's recommendation is that users "do not use the programs that are listed in this article to save or to edit program-specific files that are stored on a Windows Home Server-based system. You can still use the Windows Home Server home computer backup to back up and restore files from and to your home computers."