Those of you tracking the data corruption issue which was reported last week will be interested to know that the Knowledge Base article outlining the issue has been updated. The update provides more details on how the issue occurs and reassures users that computer backup and restore is not affected.

Update as of December 28, 2007

This issue affects only Windows Home Server. This issue does not affect any other versions of Windows Server or Windows Small Business Server. The problem is now reproducible with an automated test harness that was built over the last few days. You must be able to successfully reproduce (repro) an issue before you can create and test a fix for that issue. These issues occur in the following scenario:

• A home server is under an extreme load. For example, lots of files are being copied to the home server.
• At the same time, a user is editing files that are already saved in a shared folder on the home server.
• The program that the user is using to edit these files is one of the programs that are listed in this article.

Although this Knowledge Base article was first authored before the team could consistently repro the issue and provide more specifics, the Windows Home Server team thought it was important to make people aware of it. For now, please follow the advice in this section and 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.

In the meantime, work continues to fix the bug, and it’s hoped that a download patch will be made available shortly.

WHS, Windows Home Server, Data Corruption, KB Article, Microsoft, Update