It all started innocently enough. I was having some electrical work done that required a scheduled power shutdown for a few hours. While I do have an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) for my home network, because the UPS run time is ~30 minutes for my network (well it is a home network after all) I prepared my network for a full shut down starting with my file/media/backup server, PCs then finally the network gear. All devices slowly took a final gasp and fell dormant as expected.

Once all the work was completed I reversed the process starting with the network gear, then the server, then the PCs. The network gear immediately sprang to life with that amber and green glow that makes all networking Geeks start breathing again. That’s were the warm and fuzz stuff ended. When I reached my server I pressed the power button. The green light came on…and that was it. Nothing else. No fan whirling. No flashing DVD/CD access lights. No HDD disk activity indicators. No grinding drives. Nada, nothing, zilch. Thinking that as with any elevator if I pushed the button again repeatedly in rapid fire succession that my data warehouse would spring to life, I pressed it again…and again…and again. There it was, my faithful server, staring at me and completely lifeless.

Now I had a few choices to make to ensure that I can access and use my data as soon as possible while expending the least amount of time and funds.

I could:

1. Begin a trial and error diagnosis
2. Restore Gigs of date from DVD media
3. Restore Gigs of data from Mozy‘s off site servers
4. Remove the server’s hard drives and copy data from them using an external enclosure

As I was contemplating the above options and formulating a few others, I remembered that I had enabled network file sync on my Vista Desktop box to gauge its usefulness, performance and all around function. So, I decided to give it a try. I opened Explorer and navigated to a network share on my now dead server. Sure enough, Vista returned the folder and file structure that I was use too. I was able to open files and folders as if the server was still running. But these were locally cached versions. I then remapped the My Documents, My Pictures, My Music and other local pointers back to their original locations and simply copied the cached server files to the appropriate desktop locations. For those that I could find or that seemed out-of-date, I used Mozy‘s handy restore option and slurped them from the Mozy server. An hour or so later all my data was back and accessible.

How does this make me greener you ask? This whole process had me reviewing my need for a server all together. So, I went out and grabbed a WD Caviar® GP 500GB HDD for document and media storage with appropriate share permissions on my desktop instead of a server. I pulled the 320GB and 160GB hard drives out of the now dead server. I’m using the 320GB in the newly purchased enclosure as a backup drive. The 160GB is currently offline awaiting a suitable use. I now have my desktop run Mozy for offsite backups instead of the server running it.

Will I be serverless forever? Only time will tell. However, after a couple of weeks the final result is one less computer running and using energy and I have my data where I need it as before. So far it looks like a win-win to me!