WARNING: This is an advanced tool. Working with your Windows Home Server database is dangerous. I'm not responsible for any data loss that may ensue as a result of the use of WhsDbDump. Please always operate on a copy of the database and not the original one. Shuffle your bits with care.
If you're running this tool on a pre-Vista machine please be aware that WhsDbDump requires at least .NET 2.0+. You may download the latest version of the .NET framework directly from Microsoft.
WhsDbDump is a utility to dump your Windows Home Server backup database data files to human readable text files for examination. It decodes the binary format stored in the data files to .txt and .xml files. It supports the standard Windows Home Server data file format and is able to decode any database file specified.
Please note that some files are storing purpose specific data and will not be dumped. For example, the Data.nnnn.n.dat files store the actual cluster level data. That data will not be dumped.
Basic Usage:
- Put the latest version of WhsDbDump.exe into a folder with a copy of your Home Server database files. You can copy these files from the D:\folders\{00008086-058D-4C89-AB57-A7F909A47AB4} folder on your home server. It's safer to stop the backup service before pulling these files off. The backup service can be stopped by typing net stop whsbackup from the command prompt on the home server. You should restart the backup service after you're done by typing net start whsbackup.
- Execute WhsDbDump *dat
- Read and examine the dump files in the Dump sub-folder that was created by the tool.
WhsDbDump takes a number of parameters, but for basic usage that is all you need to know. If you want to dump the data/record sections of the backup files you can specify /data and optionally /dataalternate after the file mask (e.g. WhsDbDump.exe *dat /data /dataalternate). This will take some time to complete if your database is big and will eat up a whole lot of disk space too.