If you happen to be part of the beta group of Drive Bender, a Windows Home Server 2011 Add in meant to add drive pooling, Beta 2 has just been released. I just set up Windows Home Server 2011 this weekend, so I hope to give the latest Drive Bender beta a test run shortly. You can get more information on Drive Bender, as well as sign up to take part in the beta program here. A change log for the Beta 2 release can be seen below:
Release v1.1.2.0 – beta (2011-03-21)
- Many bug fixes and enhancements.
- Windows Home Server 2011 addin.
- Add drive to existing pool enabled.
- Merge drive into an existing pool enabled (disabled on WHS addin, please use the Manager if you wish to perform a merge).
- Remove drive from a pool is enabled.
- Folder duplication enabled.
- We have included a console output application. This can be accessed from the interface of the Manager.**
- Bug fix: The Manager now starts up correctly after being shutdown while minimized.
- Bug fix: Fixed a number of long file name issues.
- Bug fix: We have fixed a number of bugs that were preventing some third-party file managers from working correctly.
- Bug fix: The health monitor could start looking outside of the pool.
- Important – Please see “Points of note” in the Drive Bender Walk Through PDF for information on known issues and workarounds.
** This feature is intended solely for beta testing and will be removed from the final release.
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Just installed this on my WHS2011 and it seems to work very good. Now you have DE back in place! Anyone knows in what price category this software will come?
I haven’t seen anything regarding pricing yet, maybe something like US 20-30?
The key with Drive Bender or any other “DE replacement” type App is to see how well it handles drive failures and to make sure that you have a certain comfort level that your data is protected. My guess it will probably takes months of testing at a minimum to gain any sort of comfort before trusting live data. I will probably start off small with a few drives and work from there
Yeah, that’s the way I will go also. I have my main system still on the old WHS (self build with 7 different drives in it) and only do tests on a separate WHS2011 set-up/system with 3 drives.
Wow, I didn’t even know this was being developed. I love my WHS v1, but had started to look into Synology for down the road. So, if all goes well, this add-in will do to WHS 2011 what WHS v1′s Drive Extender does fully natively?
The other obvious question is whether there’s any benefit to using WHS 2011? Why not just use this app with Windows 7?
WHS has also its fine points: making daily back-ups of all attached pc’s in your environment. Easier set-up and control then in Windows7. External access, central storage, streaming and add-inns are also with WHS easy available to you.
Central storage would be the same as with W7, especially if you simple installed Drive Bender in W7. Aside from client backups, I believe setting up smb sharing with W7 can be a bit of a challenge (just read around AVSForum for people who use W7 as their server). However, the lack of WMC integration is still a negative for WHS, something that is a plus for W7 if this is something you are looking for (i.e you use an Xbox360 as an extender)
Yeah, looking at the comments below… when DB is official, I see my next home server being a windows 7 box. Yes, there are some advantages to WHS, but Win7 has SO much more going for it (program compatibility, WMC hosting, etc).. it’ll just be a lot easier to consolidate OSes in the house.
That’s not gonna mean I have to stop hanging out here, will it??
Since a majority of my writings and not WHS related I am sure we can make an exception for you
I am actually just installing Drive Bender as we speak. When the time comes I will definitely have to give more thought about W7 vs WHS 2011 if Drive Bender does turn out to be the real deal.
I actually just signed up for the beta of Drive Bender and my setup is a bit more simplistic that others. I have been running WinXP Pro SP3 as my “NAS” for about 6 months now on a 2TB drive internally. I have SyncBack running nightly making backups of everything on there (Movies, TV Shows, Photos, Documents, Music, etc.) to an external USB drive. Now I’m getting really close to filling up that 2TB drive and I really don’t want a 3TB drive because of the price (I just purchased three 2TB Hitachi drives from NewEgg for $75 each shipped). I just installed Drive Bender on my PC now and I’ll make sure to post back to let everyone know how it works!