PerfectDisk for WHS Defrag Review

Take one Friday night and a couple of beers and you have another article by Timothy Daleo of the Friday night series fame.

His latest article takes a look at PerfectDisk 10 WHS, a defragger exclusively for Windows Home Server and Tim also includes 5 videos along with his review, which you can read here.

As a side note Raxco Software, the makers of PerfectDisk are currently offering 20% off their latest version of PerfectDisk for WHS, which you can claim by using coupon code PD11FREE at checkout, but hurry as it expires 3rd Jan 2010.

Macworld Reviews the EX495

A mini review of the EX495 MediaSmart Server from HP is up on Macworld.

…but Mac audiences should be warned about the unfriendly Mac setup process. Best suited for a mixed PC and Mac environment, the EX495 is hard to endorse over more Mac friendly media servers out there.

What are your experiences of using the EX49x with the Mac? You can read their review here.

Add-In: P80 2.5.3

Developer Kris Rodenhausen has updated his software for Windows Home Server users, P80.

P80 is a website that you can view via your homepage and gives a central overview of various kinds of information that you normally would need to query from all kinds of places (WHS Console, RDP etc).

P80 provides a lot of information into one compact website, which also has the advantage that it can be viewed using a web enabled mobile phone,  which you can also use to shut down and reboot your machines too as long as you have AutoExit 2008R2 or 2009 installed too.

P80 2.5.3

The latest 2.5.3 version fixes country specific installation issues and builds on the 2.5.0 release:

  • Previous IE 7 and some International bugs fixed.
  • Cloudberry Support: You can now view your Cloudberry information on P80. In future versions you can start/stop/pause the backup plans.
  • Languages: P80 now supports Japanese and French!
  • Memory on WHS: P80 now displays the current free memory on your WHS
  • Installer Fix: No matter what port/header/ip you use for your default website, P80 will now install
  • Fixes in regards to the refresh checkbox reporting errors
  • Removal of P80 link from WHS Website on uninstall of P80
  • New P80 Logo! Thanks to the team at Cloudberry for designing this for me for FREE! You guys rock!
  • Alerts on certain actions on the summary page will now display on the top of the page
  • New User Interface design. This new design is not so “scrunched” and is easier on the eyes. Thanks goes to Will (Wriker).
  • P80 Service Images share deleted. You can now find the images at \\yourserver\Software\P80 Service Images. No “ugly” share anymore…

More information is available from here.

$5 OFF Time Traveler Add-In

Time Traveler is an add-in we recently reviewed which allows you to roll-back a file/folder/Share to any point in time, handy to revive an earlier version of a file etc.

The guys at Time Traveler WHS have put together a coupon to receive a $5 discount during checkout, bringing the full $29.99 price down to $24.99. Just use the code MSWHS5.

HP EX490 Wins a Recommended Award

Australian PC Authority online reviews the EX490 MediaSmart Server from HP.

PCA-logo

The unit gets an impressive 5/6 starts and a Recommended award although the reviewer states it is let down by price, which is no surprise as down under it is $899 Australian Dollars.

You can read the full review here.

Windows Home Server v Linux

Blogger Jason Burns talks about "The Linux Debate" and why he went for Windows Home Server over a Linux distro such as FreeNAS for his backup needs.

The Linux solution would work. It just wouldn’t be as pretty. It wouldn’t “feel” as nice, and in the end, it’s just not as good.

You can read Jason’s article here.

WHS and a Modern Day Otaku

Wolfheinrich was going to build a modern day Otaku capable of protecting data and storing multiple terabytes of data.

After looking at various RAID solutions Wolfheinrich went with Windows Home Server after his extensive tests proved positive.

You can read his story here.

3.5 Inch Hard Drive Shortage

Website the INQUIRER is stating that the supply of 3.5-inch hard disk drives (HDDs) for use in desktops and servers has started to dry up.

It appears that drive makers Western Digital (WD), Seagate, Hitachi, Toshiba and Samsung Electronics have been caught off guard by a sudden increase in demand for 3.5-inch hard drives.

Analysts are now predicting that there will be a shortage of desktop hard drives into the middle of next year.

This could see the price of 3.5" drives going up in price! Perhaps now is the time to buy those drives in case prices do start to increase.

More info here.

Add-In: TimeTraveler for WHS 1.20

The add-in Time Traveller for WHS which allows users to roll-back a file/folder/Share to any point in time has been updated to version 1.20.

Of most importance this latest version has a new "locate rollback" feature so you can view all rollbacks and easily select the rollback of your choice without having to "guess" at a time/date and the WHS Share rights are updated during install so all WHS users can access the "Time Traveler Cache" share.

Here’s the full details of the update.

New Features:

  • Selectable rollback target folder – rollback directly to the original Share/folder or a separate cache folder
  • Rollback version finder – easy viewing of rollback points to find time/date of the file you want to rollback. A more informative selection of files/folders during rollbacks
  • Updated status display – now easier to view the current action being performed by Time Traveler; Online, Updating database, Updating Folder List, and Expired Trial

Bug fixes:

  • Set full read/write permissions for all WHS users when creating the "Time Traveler Rollbacks" share during installation
  • Fixed selection of deep folders within the Rollback Single File selector
  • Fixed apparent hang when selecting a Share containing many files/folders. i.e WHS Console could become unresponsive for a few minutes
  • Fixed installer failure on some Power Pack 2 and Power Pack 3 systems

More information is available from here.

OpenDNS Issues Solved with PP3

Lingkai Kong a Software Development Engineer on the Windows Home Server team has written a post describing an issue some experienced when OpenDNS (or similar services) was adopted.

In his detailed post, Lingkai describes how these issues were resolved in Power Pack 3, when the connector software could not find the Home Server, which you can find here.