MS Windows Home Server

Add-In: Drive Bender 1.1.7.5

Drive Bender brings us even closer to RC1 with the release of version 1.1.7.5

Lots of cool stuff in this beta release for 2011-08-18:

• Update: Applying file security and / or file attributes to a file in a folder marked for duplicate, will also apply those same security / attribute setting to the duplicated file.
• Update: Much improved start up performance.
• Update: Smooth Streaming is now file type sensitive, and when enabled, will only kick in for common audio and video files.
• Update: Drive Bender core driver updated.
• Bug fix: Exception from either the Manager or WHS add-in no longer occurs if the Drive Bender server is still starting when these clients start.
• Update: Implementation of the Windows Server Health system (important Drive Bender events are now flagged with server alerts).

More information on Drive Bender can be found here.

PerfectDisk 12 Windows Home Server Service Pack 2 Build 285

PerfectDisk 12 Windows Home Server has been updated to Service Pack 2 (Build 285).

This latest build includes various bug fixes and existing users can “Check For Updates” in the products or wait for Autoupdate.

Client fixes:

• S.M.A.R.T. tab incorrectly displayed some drives (SSDs) which were not supported as well as incorrectly reporting temperature for several drives which should have displayed correctly. These issues were fixed.
• Default defragmentation methods were changed for drives in a virtual environment. PerfectDisk disabled all defragmentation methods if it could not determine the drive type in a virtual environment. This has been changed.
• The tray icon incorrectly allowed control of hidden drives. This has been fixed.
• The S.M.A.R.T. graphs did not follow the user settings for time (24 hour vs 12 hour with AM, PM).
• The Global Setting dialog threw an error on opening when the Nvidia video driver was installed. This is due to a bug with the nvidia dll (nvsvc64.dll, v7.15.11.7923). PerfectDisk has worked around this issue.
• Corrected an installation bug. When installing PerfectDisk Server edition, on a computer running the PerfectDisk Enterprise Console, it indicated the installation needed to be to the same folder. This is a hold over from PerfectDisk v11 and is no longer required.
• After a selected file defragmentation pass from the Most Fragmented files list the list was not refreshed to show the file had been defragged. This has been fixed.
• File exclusion was not working properly when performing a Defrag Only pass. This has been fixed.

Console fixes:

• Version 12 allowed connecting to a v11 console database even though this is not supported. v12 Console now blocks this.
• Summary alert email is now sent in a tabular format to improve usability.
  There was an issue with the license count table, such that the console displayed incorrect license counts. The bug has been fixed, however if there is bad data currently stored in the "installs" table the rows will have to be deleted. They will repopulate on the first synch task.
• Schedule info for the Synch schedule was not displayed. This has been fixed.
• Control of the Optiwrite settings from the Console Configuration Profile did not work for Windows XP clients. This was because the driver (PDFsFilter.sys) cannot be stopped on Windows XP due to operating system limitations. This was fixed.
• An enhancement was made to the Console data base configuration to allow reusing an existing logon.
• Self diagnostic dropped PING, since this routinely failed and is not used as a communication port, so is meaningless.

More details on PerfectDisk 12 Home Server can be found here.

Add-In: StableBit DrivePool Build 3996

The updates are flowing for the Drive Extender replacement add-in StableBit DrivePool, with another 3 updates in the last 24 hours.

Build 3661:

• Suspend folder links while renaming.

Build 3664:

• Fixed deleting folders.

Build 3996:

• Shared folder security propagation is now asynchronous.
• Added new function to folder links that will clean up any shares pointing to non-existent paths.
• More minor HomeGroup synchronization improvements.
• Fixed various issues with folder renaming.

As always more details on StableBit DrivePool can be found here.

Add-In: WHS Twitter Feed

WHS Twitter Feed is an add-in for Windows Home Server 2011.

The add-in allows you to remove the standard Windows logo from the login pane and replace it with your Twitter feed:

You can download WHS Twitter Feed from here.