Windows Home Server Bug Could Lead To Data Loss

A flaw in Microsoft's Windows Home Server could lead to data loss under certain circumstances, the company has confirmed.

Windows Home Server, released over the summer, aims to offer home users centralized media storage and home backup capabilities for networked PCs.

Microsoft last week updated a support document acknowledging that files edited using certain programs and then stored on Windows Home Server could become corrupted.

"Microsoft is researching this problem and will post more information in this article when the information becomes available," the Microsoft help documentation explains. "Until an update for Windows Home Server is available, we recommend that you 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."

The listed programs are as follows: Windows Vista Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Microsoft Office OneNote 2007, Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Microsoft Money 2007, and SyncToy 2.0 Beta.

The issue was acknowledged in October, when Microsoft warned "not to copy data files that contain alternate [NTFS] data streams to Windows Home Server shared folders." Microsoft offers free software called Streams to determine whether NTFS files have alternate data streams associated with them.

Microsoft also says that some users have reported problems with Torrent applications, Intuit Quicken, and QuickBooks program files and that it is attempting to reproduce those issues.

Microsoft says that file corruption can occur under circumstances when a home server is under extreme loads, as might happen when copying large numbers of files, when a user is editing files already saved to a shared folder on the home server, and when a user is using one of the listed programs to edit files on a home server.