Newegg currently have Windows Home Server 2011 listed for $53.02, but use the coupon code EMCKAKD36 to get $8.03 off, bringing the final price to $44.99 which includes free shipping.
You can buy a copy using this (affiliate) link which helps pay the bills 
.
The beta M3 build of StableBit DrivePool has been updated to version 3790.
This latest release includes the following changes:
More details on StableBit DrivePool are available here.
AnandTech takes a look at WHS 2011 as well as FreeBSD, FreeNAS, Ubuntu and Samba in their File Server Buyer’s Guide.
The guide looks at ideal CPUs, motherboards and ram for a file server , and tells us what’s best to purchase.
Cases, power supplies and hard drives are next on their list:
“The largest drives currently available are 3TB, which can now be found for as little as $110. The second-largest capacity drives at 2TB generally offer the best $/GB ratio, and can regularly be found for $70 (and less when on sale or after rebate). 1TB drives are fine if you don’t need much space, and can sometimes be found for as little as $40.”
Its and interesting 6 page read which you can find here.
If you own a AWIECO Home server a new version of AWIECO ServerCenter is available.
ServerCenter allows owners of AWIECO Home Servers to configure their front panel displays to decide what information to display.
This latest release (0.8.1) adds a fan control to the configuration.
More details on AWIECO Home Server solutions are available from here.
The add-in for Windows Home Server 2011 users which puts notifications back in the system tray or taskbar has had an update.
Here is the change log for version 2.02 of Home Server Status:
Version 2.02 can be downloaded directly using this link.
Episode 57 of the BYOB podcast is up and this weeks show has information on the new Ceton quad-tuner USB model CableCARDs, HD HomeRun Prime, Crucial’s SSD firmware, Michael’s Window Home Server and a listener email on video/audio streaming.
You can catch it here.
Windows guru, Paul Thurrott has used WHS 2011 day in and day out for the last four to five months to see if it would stand up to his expectations, and work the way he needed it to work.
His answer:
And I’m happy to report now, after these many months of usage, it does
In his blog post Paul recaps the many useful features that WHS 2011 provides, and explains how he uses it on a day to day basis.
The add-in Home Server SMART for version 1 of Windows Home Server has been updated to version 2.0.8.25.
Home Server SMART automatically and continuously monitors the health of most of your hard disks attached to WHS by examining the S.M.A.R.T. data exposed by the disks and determines the health of them.
This release from Friday, September 2nd implements a number of new features, the most notable being automatic, continuous monitoring and USB disk support. There are a number of new enhancements, changes and bug fixes:
New Features
- Home Server SMART runs as a Windows Service. Disks are monitored automatically every 3 minutes (configurable) and health alerts are accordingly raised in WHS. Polling can be done as little as once per minute, up to once every two hours. The service runs and monitors continuously whether or not you are logged into the WHS Console.
- USB disk support. Many USB external enclosures with SMART-capable disks will expose their SMART data that Home Server SMART can use to display full health details. Not all USB enclosures are supported.
- Double-click feature in SMART details. Double-click on any SMART attribute for any disk to get a more in-depth look at that attribute.
- Added a green starburst icon next to attributes Home Server SMART classifies as super critical. This does not mean the attribute is causing a problem; rather, it is HSS’ way to highlight attributes HSS watches more closely.
- Added an examination of each attribute’s Flags field, which tells whether or not an attribute is Critical, as well as whether it’s an error rate, event counter, self-preserving, statistical or performance.
- Added an icon to the physical disk list which gives a quick visual indication of a disk’s health.
- Added the ability to ignore certain problems (i.e. bad sectors); problems that are ignored don’t generate health alerts again unless the number of events increases, or the SMART threshold is exceeded.
- Added the ability to delete stale (no longer installed) disks from the Registry.
- Added the ability to reset the user-configurable settings, ignored problems or everything. Resetting everything deletes all information about all disks and starts over fresh.
- Added the ability to stop and start the Windows service.
- Added a Settings button to pull up Home Server SMART settings directly.
- Added Windows event logging.
- Added Debugging controls to the settings, which can be used if necessary to aid in troubleshooting.
- Added the ability to check for updates from the Settings dialogue.
Changes to Known Good Functionality
- Removed the Email tab from Settings. Please use Alex Kuretz’s Remote Notification add-in if you desire emailed alerts. Alex’s add-in also supports SMS messaging and more.
- Combined some modules to eliminate a DLL and reduce the application’s overall footprint and memory consumption.
- Disabled (dimmed) the ability to ignore Critical alerts. May enable at a later date, but it seems to defeat the purpose of the add-in.
- Changed several icons on buttons in the main UI.
- SMART data in UI is read directly from the Registry. This results in much faster application loading and display.
- Refresh button triggers an immediate, manual polling of data which updates the Registry data for display.
- "Please Wait" message appears during manual refresh.
- Changed the attribute "type" text that is displayed from "Health" and "Age" to "Pre-Fail" and "Advisory," respectively.
- Changed how the attribute "critical" flag is displayed. Previously it was set to Yes for any attribute with a non-zero threshold. This is incorrect per the SMART specification. Correct analysis relies on the attribute’s Flags field.
- Changed how a disk’s health is reported when its Value falls to EQUAL its non-zero threshold. Previously this would set the attribute to Fail; it is now set to Warning (SMART specification states that an attribute fails when the Value is LESS than the threshold).
- Changed the number of bad sectors, end-to-end errors and other super critical attributes necessary to trigger Critical and Degraded states.
Bug Fixes
- HSS-14: Can’t view SMART status for any drives. This was caused by improper NULL checking on servers with media card readers, including those attached to printers.
- HSS-15: Warnings stay even though un-checked.
- HSS-16: Some disks no longer show SMART data (they did in previous production build).
- HSS-17: WHS Console Crash when refreshing. This could happen when certain Resets are performed in the Settings. In-use objects are marked for deletion and the user must log out and back in to clear the objects.
- Fixed problem with Silicon Image SiI controllers which don’t expose SMART threshold data via standard COM (P/Invoke); WMI is used to get this data.
- Fixed a NullReferenceException that was thrown when populating the Select a Disk to View field. This is caused by some disks not exposing a string in the Win32_DiskDrive field.
- Fixed "not supported" error some users were still encountering.
Known Issues
- Some users with Silicon Image SiI controllers that previously exposed SMART data but stopped doing so may not see SMART data from those controllers. Some users have reported this after performing factory resets to their home servers. This data also disappears from WMI, so even previous versions of Home Server SMART will not display data for them.
- Users with Sunplus USB enclosures: Only one Sunplus bridge chip is working with HSS, specifically VID 04FC, PID 0C15. Users with USB disks on other Sunplus chips will not see SMART data from those disks.
More details including the download are available from here.
DiskBuncher is a program that moves your files automatically to different data drives and presents them in one network drive. As there site states:
Dividing your files to many different disks isn’t necessary anymore, so you are able to use your files by accessing just one place.
It can be seen as a save and flexible JBOD/RAID0 even if the implementation is done completely different.
DiskBuncher has no build in data redundancy but there are many solutions to extend DiskBuncher such as FlexRAID or disParity, and although DiskBuncher is currently only available for Windows Vista and 7 users, WHS users should defiantly keep an eye on this interesting project.
If you are planning to install version 1 of Windows Home Server on a HP ProLiant MicroServer then DO NOT use one of the modded bios that speeds up the ODD port (CD Drive Bay) before installation.
Due to the ACHI/IDE mode of the SATA controller you have to change in and out of IDE mode to complete the installation which will NOT work if you mod the bios beforehand as you will get a blue screen error message after the first boot.
If you are currently using a modded bios and want to install v1, then first revert back to the latest original HP bios, install version 1 of WHS, get everything setup and then you can re-flash a modded bios to speed up the ODD port if you are planning to use it to connect a hard drive.
For a great guide on installing version 1 of Windows Home Server on the HP ProLiant MicroServer, then follow Stanza’s post here on the Australian Overclockers Forum
