Remember a while back when I talked about HP’s Media Home Server, a way-high-price-point box that runs the Windows Home Server operating system? It turns out that there is something else that might make consumers think twice: it is possible (though it sounds fairly unlikely) to get into situations where you think that you are backing up your files to the server, but actually you are turning them into corrupted garbage. This brief CNet article breaks the bad news. It sounds like the system dealing with files can get confused if overloaded.

I hope that Microsoft is able to fix this quickly; potential data loss is a show-stopper in my estimation. I am trying to recall any instance of data loss in the various Unix-based servers I’ve run or used over the years, and pretty much any time I’ve lost data, it’s turned out to be hardware failure or my own fault. Here’s an article detailing exactly how to get up and running with a home server based on Linux about as painlessly as possible.