If you’re like most home users, your Windows Home Server is probably your most important computer. It’s a great way to keep all your family’s photos, music, and videos in one place, and it can also act as a server for your home network. But what if something happened to your Windows Home Server? Fortunately, it’s easy to back up your Windows Home Server system state. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Log into your Windows Home Server using the administrator account.
  2. Click the Start button and then click Control Panel.
  3. Double-click System and Security Center. 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 ..

Backup WHS System State

The System State includes the most important system files for WHS such as the Registry, Startup Files, and Protected System files.

The first thing you’ll want to to is log on to WHS either through the WHS Console, Remote Desktop, or through Advanced Admin Console. Now navigate to Start \ All Programs \ Accessories \ System Tool \ Backup.

The Backup or Restore Wizard launches, but we’re not going to use the Wizard. From here click on the Advanced Mode link instead.

This opens the Backup Utility and in the left pane expand My Computer and check System State.

Now at the bottom of the screen click the Browse button to find a destination to save the backup file.

Note: Don’t back it up to the server’s local drive. Make sure you choose a destination like a shared folder, Flash Drive, or External HD.

As you can see here we have it set to backup to our shared backup folder…now click on Start Backup.

You will get an overview of the backup job and can start it right away or schedule it for a later time.

Now wait while everything is backed up. The amount of time it takes will vary depending on the server configuration. Also keep in mind the file can be large (ours was 627 MB), so make sure you have enough space on the location you’re backing up to.

When the backup is complete you can view a report for detailed information on the backup or close out of the utility.

After we completed the System State backup, we brought the file to one of the PCs on our network and backed up the backup file using Carbonite…having redundant backups is always a good idea!

Backup the Registry Only

If you don’t want to backup the full System State, you can also backup the entire Registry only. Remote into WHS and open the Registry Editor.

Then click on File \ Export…

Now select a location and name for the backup. Under Export range make sure to select All to backup the entire Registry. Or you can go through and backup a Selected branch if you’re only making changes to specific parts of the Registry. When in doubt just backup the entire thing.

Again you’ll want to back it up to a location other than your local server drive. The size of our Registry was around 45 MB, though yours may vary.

Backing up your server’s System State and Registry is a great idea to incorporate into your backup strategy. If something does go wrong, you can easily restore the settings which should help get your server back to where it needs to be.