MS Windows Home Server

Add-In: My Movies v5.01 Pre Release 1

The pre-release version of My Movies for Windows – Home and Essentials edition has been updated to version 5.01 Pre Release 1.

Here is the change log for this release:

• Added: The "prompt" setting for the automatic disc copier have now been improved in Windows Media Center.
• Added: XBMC meta-data storage handler now contains a settings option to override NFO files created by other softwares than My Movies. Please enable if your NFO’s aren’t updating.
• Added: XBMC meta-data storage handler now includes the option of configuring clients that should have a library update request. Notice, this does not update meta-data on existing titles, only adds new (limitation of XBMC)
• Change: AddExternalServerCredentials handles upper case vs. lower case in server name.
• Change: External server credentials dialog now also contains credentials for configured folders.
• Change: Meta-data storage have been moved, allowing it to cast notifications when storage failed.
• Fix: Import/monitoring of TV Series folders now ignores VIDEO_TS and BDMV/STREAM folders.
• Fix: Copy disc status in Windows Media Center showed a starting date, when time should be plenty.
• Fix: Minor check to ensure against an exception when database becomes unavailable.
• Fix: Video converter storage path could be empty when re-opening settings dialog.
• Fix: Adding a folder monitoring path could prompt for credentials twice.
• Fix: Maximum 10 alerts are now sent for duplicate TV Serie episode files
• Fix: Improvements to folder monitoring to better handle when devices becomes unavailable and then available again.
• Fix: Various improvements to the login procedures for external storage devices.
• Added: The application now specifically blocks for usage of mapped network drives, which are not supported in My Movies 5.
• Fix: To improve sync speed titlelist is no longer updated while doing download of collection.
• Fix: Expand option disappeared for some disc titles in title list, when they were saved.
• Fix: On collection download box sets are now shown as box sets in the title list instead of standalone titles.
• Fix: Upgrade database call could throw an exception of DB server was unavailable.
• Fix: Minor updates to external credentials log on, to ensure to retry failed connections better.
• Fix: Reset collection numbers function could crash if database had some broken TV Series data.
• Fix: Some titles did not have the correct title set passed to the video converter, meaning it processed largest file, and not the meta-data marked title.

You can download this pre-release version from here.

Add-In: StableBit Scanner v2.5.0.3041 Beta

The beta build of StableBit Scanner has been updated.

Version 2.5.0.3041 beta has the following change log:

* Various text fields in the SMART / Disk Details windows are now selectable, allowing you to right click on them and
  copy the text to clipboard.
* [Issue #5238] When connecting multiple disks that cannot be reliably uniquely identified, multiple issues arose.
    – Disks can’t be identified uniquely, for example, when not exposing their S/N and not being initialized.
    – Uninitialized disks where the S/N was the only unique identifier was not being used to uniquely identify the disk.
* Added little cloud icon next to information that is retrieved from the cloud in "Disk Details".
* Added display of all firmwares that were seen for a particular disk model. This is retrieved from BitFlock.
    – Shown under "Disk Details" to the right of your firmware, if other firmwares were ever seen.
* Added CDL GB/day of host writes, mainly for SSDs.
    – SSDs sometimes publish how many GBs they are designed to write per day. Exceeding this value will shorten the
      expected lifetime of the SSD.
    – For example, "SSD is rated for 20GB/day of host writes for 3 years".
    – This statistic will show up under "Disk Details" when available.
* Lowered the default static maximum drive temperature to 44C, for the "Server" profile. Hard drives that are operating on
  a 24×7 duty cycle are generally meant to be running at around 40C in order to achieve maximum MTBF.
* Added option to specify overheating threshold. If the drive temperature approaches the manufacturer’s maximum operating
  temperature by this number of degrees a temperature warning will be issued.
    – See Scanner Settings -> Heat -> "Warning threshold:"
    – If this is disabled, an overheating warning will be issued only if the drive temperature exceeds the manufacturer’s
      maximum operating temperature.
    – Enabled this by default for the "Server" profile.
* Added annualized failure rate (AFR) and component design life (CDL) to the Disk Details’ new drive "Reliability" section.
    – CDL will be shown if published by the manufacturer.
    – AFR will be shown if published by the manufacturer or calculated from the MTBF assuming a 24×7 duty cycle.
* The MTBF and maximum load cycle counts will be shown on the SMART screen, if available (under the appropriate attribute).
* Merged all Telerik controls used by the Scanner into 2 portable assemblies. This allows the Scanner to run alongside
  other assemblies that use Telerik controls in the same process (E.g. Dashboard).
* The maximum operating temperature for a disk can now be optionally retrieved from the disk’s SCT and the BitFlock cloud.
    – To enable: Scanner Settings -> Heat -> "Use manufacturer specified maximum operating temperature…"
    – When enabled, the maximum operating temperature will be retrieved from the disk using SCT, if available.
    – The temperature is also retrieved from the BitFlock cloud based on the disk model. BitFlock contains disk
      metadata such as maximum disk temperatures, as they are published in the manufacturer specification sheets.
    – Maximum operating temperature can always be manually overridden on a disk by disk basis in "Disk Settings".
    – The current maximum operating temperature will be shown in the SMART window, under the temperature attribute,
      and where it’s coming from.
* Performance charts in the main window will now show an instantaneous 2 second performance value and a 10 second
  historic chart.
* Charts in the disk details window will now show up to 30 seconds of performance data and a 2 second instantaneous
  performance value in the legend.
* Converted all chart controls (disk details / SMART / burst test) to use the new high performance charts.
* New theme: Visual Studio 2013.
* Updated Telerik controls to Q2 2014.
* New UI themes:
    – Office 2013
    – Office Black
    – Office Blue
    – Office Silver
    – Summer
    – Transparent
    – Vista
    – Windows 7 (original updated)
    – Windows 8
    – Windows 8 Touch (tablet friendly)
* UI themes can now be selected from Scanner Settings.
* Tooltips were not utilizing line breaks properly.
* [Issue #2146] The UI now supports 3 themes and will look different depending on the OS running.
                (Windows Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8+)
                Telerik controls were updated to the latest version.
* Fixed UI getting out of sync with the service. This was causing the disk temperature to disappear among other
  issues.
* [Issue #4217] Added error reporting logic to the file system "Searcher" and "Recoverer".
* [Issue #4213] Fixed possible null reference when updating a disk’s attributes (SMART / performance).
* [Issue #4215] Fixed stuck on "Initializing".
* [Issue #47] Re-factored licensing code to prevent the licensing request from showing up unnecessarily.
* [Issue #3195] The warranty period will now be shown in disk details, when known. This information comes from
                the manufacturer’s specifications.
* [Issue #3195] The load cycle count warning threshold is now retrieved from BitFlock. The maximum load cycle
                count will be updated from the manufacturer’s specifications, when available. If not
                known, a default of 600,000 cycles will be used.
* [Issue #2181] Fixed notification tag error.
* [Issue #1134] Added new .config setting Disks_MaxDegreeOfParallelism.
* Fixed an issue related to the new non-modal SMART / Disk Details windows, where the Dashboard would crash
  periodically.
* [Issue #1162] Changed the theme to Metro on anything newer than WHS 2011 / Windows 7.
* [Issue #1162] Made the WSS tab title dynamic based on what OS it’s being installed on. For WHS 2011 it will
                continue to say "StableBit Scanner" and for anything newer it will say "SCANNER" to better match
                the style of that OS.
* [Issue #1129] Make sure the UI doesn’t crash when the service stops or a reconnection takes place while you
                have one or more windows open.
* [Issue #1129] SMART / Disk Details windows are now non-modal.
* [Issue #1136] Added error reporting logic to WMI event firing.
* [Issue #88] Optimized the sector map to deal with displaying 100,000+ bad sector regions without stalling the
              rest of the UI.
* [Issue #75] When scanning outside of the time window due to a past due setting, only rescan the sectors
              / file systems that are past due, instead of sectors / file systems that are past the re-check
              period.
* [Issue #75] Take the past due setting into consideration when selecting file systems for a re-check.
* [Issue #75] Disk check info device ID should be updated on each service restart, as it does not persist
              on reboot.
* [Issue #71] Increase "starting service components" timeout error reports from 30 to 60 seconds.
* Added .MSI creation to deployment script.
* [Issue #49] Added SMTP support for sending email notifications.
  See: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Advanced_Settings

More information on StableBit Scanner is available from here.