Microsoft warned users “not to copy data that contain alternate data streams to Windows Home Server shared folders”, officially acknowledging the issue in October. Microsoft has thus confirmed that data loss could result due to a flaw in the Microsoft Windows Home Server under special circumstances.

Windows Home Server is an application offering individual users ability to centralize the media storage and easily backup data, especially for computers on a network.

Microsoft has supplied a support document describing the issue. It has been pointed out that files which have been edited in certain external editors, on storing within Windows Home Server may become corrupted.

Microsoft documentation explain the issue in a diplomatic manner by saying, “Microsoft is researching this problem and will post more information in this article when the information becomes available” and “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 list of programs affected as a result of this 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.

This problem was acknowledged and brought to notice by Microsoft in October 2007 and Microsoft strictly advised users “not to copy data or files that contain alternate [NTFS] data streams to Windows Home Server shared folders.” Microsoft has also recommended a free application known as Streams which will help users to identify whether data or files contain alternate data streams that may cause this problem.

Microsoft also indicated that some users have also reported certain torrent applications, Intuit Quicken and QuickBooks program files also can be problematic and are in the process of investigating this issue.

Microsoft said that the file corruption could also result under circumstances of extreme loads on the home server, or also while copying large number of files, or in the case a user attempts to edit a file that has already been saved in a shared folder on the home server, or also when a user uses any of the applications listed above for editing the files.

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