Western Digital have released a video promoting their Sentinel DX4000 small office storage server.

More details on the WD Sentinel DX4000 can be found here.

WD Sentinel DX4000 Promo Video is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

“…if you are in the iTunes ecosystem and running a Windows Home Server, you might look into this product to see if will benefit you as much as it did me.”

Its an interesting read and as the writer states, if you are a iTunes and WHS user as it allows these two platforms to co-exist and not only work, but actually complement each other.

You can find the article here.

Bridge the Gap between WHS, iTunes and Home Sharing is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Website "The OS Quest" has an article about using a Synology DiskStation 212j as an iSCSI target from Windows Home Server 2011.

“…for my purposes here it can be thought of as a way to present a network connected drive as a local drive to the operating system.”

The different iSCSI target types the Synology DiskStation software supports are looked at as well as how to configure it. The writer also includes some benchmarks

“Being able to use the Synology boxes as an iSCSI target is a nice feature.”

You can read the post here.

Using a Synology DiskStation as an iSCSI target from WHS 2011 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Episode 76 of the BYOB podcast is up and this week its how to manage iTunes from your central library using iHomeserver for iTunes add-in.

This plus more is in this weeks edition of the build your own box podcast, which you can find here.

The BYOB Podcast Episode 76 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

This is a great deal as the HITACHI Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3020ALA632 (0F12117) 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive is valued at $130.

HP ProLiant N40L Ultra Micro Tower Server System AMD Turion II Neo N40L 1.5GHz 2C 2GB (1 x 2GB) 658553-001

HP ProLiant MicroServer with Free 2TB Hard Drive is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Its another week so that means its time for another episode of The Home Server Show podcast.

“Awesome show for you this week.  Patrick Kennedy from servethehome.com joins us to talk about networking gear, hard drives, motherboards, his site, and his gear.  It’s a hardware show for sure.  Patrick has a lot of knowledge in the area and we hit him with a ton of questions. There is also a ton of news for Windows Home Server this week.  Enjoy…”

You can catch episode 171 here.

The Home Server Show Podcast Episode 171 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

AWIECO have released a Windows Phone 7 app for WakeOnLan pro users.

Start up computers attached to your network with AWIECO WakeOnLAN Pro, pin computers to Live Tiles

More details are available at the WP7 Marketplace.

AWIECO WakeOnLAN Pro for WP7 v1.0.0.0 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

With the announcement of both the 5big Office and 5big Office+ from Lacie, the guys have released a video on their Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials plus offering:

More details on the Lacie 5big Office+ can be found here.

Lacie 5big Office+ Video is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

In a press release Lacie say that both units run a 1.6GHz Intel 64-bit Atom processor and come complete with 2GB of RAM. The Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials offering in the form of the LaCie 5big Office+ is available in 2 configurations.  The one single 2TB hard drive model (9000201) will cost $749 whilst a massive 10TB model comprising 5 hard drives (9000203) will cost $1,499. The more exciting (for us) WHS 2011 driven LaCie 5big Office unit is available in a single 2TB hard drive configuration (9000200) costing $599.

Here’s the full release:

LaCie Announces 5big Office Series –
Essential Backup Solutions for Small Offices

Today LaCie announced the 5big Office Series, its latest five-bay network attached storage solutions. With easy setup, collaboration and total data protection, the 5big Office Series is a solid long-term investment for any small businesses. They feature the industry-trusted Windows® Server operating systems and a powerful Intel® Atom™ processor.

POWERED BY WINDOWS
The 5big Office Series, powered by Windows Home Server 2011, is perfect for backing up as many as 10 PCs. The 5big Office+, powered by Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials, backs up as many as 25. Get up and running in a flash on either system with a straightforward setup process and a familiar Windows environment. The 5big Office Series helps business groups collaborate like no comparable NAS.

NO-COMPROMISE HARDWARE
With the 5big Office Series, LaCie made no compromise on hardware. The 1.6GHz Intel® 64-bit Atom™ processor and 2GB of RAM enables maximum simultaneous data access and backups for all employees. Additionally, the 5big Office Series’ efficient cooling system protects internal components, ensuring long-term reliability.

OPTIMIZED DATA USAGE
The single-drive version allows users to add additional drives, as needed, for up to 10TB of total capacity. It reduces the initial investment and assures a long-term solution. What’s more, its PC backup data deduplication only backs up a single instance of redundant data. This optimizes storage space as well as increases backup speed.

5BIG OFFICE+: INTEGRATE MULTIPLE OFFICES
The 5big Office+ offers all the features of the 5big Office, but brings powerful tools – including DFS-R/N – for integration with offsite servers. IT managers can centralize and consolidate data, even when it’s spread across multiple geographic locations. The 5big Office+ also features Windows domain/Active Directory support, a faster dual-core processor, dual Ethernet links, and can back up more PCs.

ADDITIONAL 5BIG OFFICE SERIES FEATURES:
• Complete Data Protection: Automated backups of office computers make complete data protection easy.
• Disaster Recovery: Restore a file or even a complete workstation operating system using a simple wizard. The 5big Office Series also supports secure RAID 1 and RAID 5 modes for automatic, hardware-level protection.
• Offsite Protection: For an additional level of data protection, the user can also back up data to an offsite location with NAS-to-DAS backup, NAS-to-NAS backup or Wuala, LaCie’s Secure Cloud Storage service.
• Employee Collaboration: The system can serve files to any operating system – PC, Mac, or Linux – on the network.
• Wuala Secure Cloud Storage: The product comes with a 100GB of trial Wuala Secure Cloud Storage that lets users store and back up files online and access them from anywhere.
• Centralized Monitoring: Control RAID, users, or monitor backup status in the blink of an eye.

HELP WHEN YOU NEED IT
The LaCie 5big Office Series is protected by a three-year limited warranty that includes comprehensive, complimentary web-based resources, expert in-house technical support, and worldwide repair/replacement coverage. Advance Care Option can also be purchased. For details, see www.lacie.com/warranty.

AVAILABILITY
The LaCie 5big Office is available in single-disk 2TB capacity and the 5big Office+ is available in single-disk 2TB or five-disk 10TB capacities through the LaCie Online Store and LaCie Storage Partners starting at $749.00. For more information, visit www.lacie.com.

ABOUT LACIE
With operations in the Americas, Europe and Asia, LaCie is the leading manufacturer of storage devices for PC, Apple® and Linux. LaCie has differentiated itself through sleek design and remarkable technical performance. Find out more about our products at www.lacie.com.

This is excellent news for Windows Home Server 2011 users as it now has a major OEM delivering hardware for the platform.

Lacie Announce a WHS 2011 Offering is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Episode 75 of the BYOB Podcast is up.

“Corsair Accelerator Series, Jawbone JamBox, How to be security conscious and why all on this weeks BYOB podcast.”

Lots of good stuff for the "Build Your Own Box" enthusiast, which you can find here.

The BYOB Podcast Episode 75 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

In his post Koitsu states that the external 6.3A at 19V power brick is not good enough:

“The unit comes with 5400rpm drives — if you were to shove four 7200rpm drives in there, you almost certainly would be taxing that little brick of an AC adapter. Your drives would start falling off the bus and experiencing strange anomalies during high I/O.”

Koitsu then works out the percentage of power use a single WD2002FAEX drive would require and gives us his findings, which you can find here.

A Bad WD Sentinel DX4000 Power Design is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Alexander Kent the developer behind Grid Junction, an Add-in for managing a UPS via the Windows Home Server Console has announced that the version for WHS 2011 has been cancelled.

In a statement released today Alexander said that the project did not gain enough traction to warrant further development:

“After careful consideration we have made the decision to suspend development of Grid Junction 2.0 for the foreseeable future. We have decided not to release the source code or any unfinished versions of Grid Junction 2.0. If you currently have Grid Junction 2.0 beta installed, please uninstall it at your earliest convenience.”

From HomeServerLand.

Grid Junction for WHS 2011 Cancelled is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

His list comprises links to router setup wikis, server deployment, remote web access, media and workgroup KBs plus a lot more from Microsoft’s Windows HSBS team.

You can check out Sean’s listing here.

WHS and SBS KBs and Wiki Links is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

This weeks edition of The Home Server Show podcast is out:

…plenty of talk about Synology and Windows 8 Storage Spaces and talk about a typical “Home” server and it’s role in the household.

All this is on episode 170 of The Home Home Server Show.

The Home Server Show Podcast Episode 170 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

In the forum post at WeGotServed TwinTraveller goes through his experience of installing and using this new security package from G Data for WHS 2011 users.

You can find the post here.

G Data for HomeServer – A Users Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Episode 74 of the BYOB Podcast is up and this week its what CES 2012 had to offer.

Western Digital My Book Thunder bolt, Highpoint hybrid RAID, Fractal and Lian-Li cases and lots more.

You can find episode 74 here.

The BYOB Podcast Episode 74 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Included is a look at the innards of the Sentinel particularly at the different chips involved.

It’s performance including RAID 5 file copy read and write performance are also listed, which you can read about here.

WD DX4000 Sentinel Mini Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

In this weeks edition:

“We dive deep into a blog post about Windows 8 and how the new Storage Spaces works.  There are some telling points to discuss about the future of Windows Home Server and how storage management is changing for Windows.  Plenty to discuss so give it a listen…”

You can find episode 169 here.

The Home Server Show Podcast Episode 169 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Gunnar is recommending that the base package should be 10 licenses as it is right now, but that there should also be an option to buy more licenses such as 5 more at a time on top if required.

You can read he’s post here.

Should Additional License Packs be made available for WHS? is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Another users build list which you can find here.

Another WHS 2011 Build List is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Up to 6 hard drives can be installed within the SmartNAS which is powered by a Atom dual-core processor and 4GB of memory. Complete with 1Gb LAN interface, 2x USB 3.0 ports and 2x USB 2.0 ports.

Also provided at a cost of 2980 yen (approx. $39) per month is "Cloud NuTech Recovery Services’ which will automatically back up data from the SmartNAS to data centers operated by NuTech.

The SmartNAS is the size of an A4 sheet of paper and available to the Japanese market is various configurations. For example the 1TB HDD × 2 (2TB total) is available for 88,000 yen ($1144), the 2TB HDD × 4 (8TB total) for 168,000 yen ($2184) and the 3TB HDD x 6 (18TB total) for 298,000 yen ($3874):

These different hard drive configurations also come with the following RAID Levels: 2-drive models: 0/1, 4 and 6 drive models: 0/1/10/5.

Scheduled for launch mid-January Newtech are hoping to sell 2,000 units by the end of March 2012 and expects to sell a further 10,000 in the first year. We will have to see at the prices Newtech are hoping for!

Newtech SmartNAS powered by WHS 2011 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

This breakthrough will allow hard drive manufactures to produce much bigger capacity hard drives 100 to 150TB compared with 1TB

Today, hard drives use ferromagnetic materials where the spin of atoms are aligned or in the same direction but IBM used a form of magnetism called antiferromagnetism, where atoms spin in opposite directions, allowing scientists to create an experimental atomic-scale magnet memory that is at least 100 times denser than today’s hard disk drives.

More details are available at ComputerWorld.

Hard Drive Capacity to Increase 100 Fold is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

ReFS, which stands for Resilient File System will be introduced only as part of Windows Server 8 to start with and so naturally will affect users of the next version of Windows Home Server as it will be built on the Windows Server 8 platform.

ReFS, which is built on the foundations of NTFS, maintains crucial compatibility while at the same time is architected and engineered for a new generation of storage technologies and scenarios:

We designed ReFS and Storage Spaces to complement each other, as two components of a complete storage system…In addition to improved performance, Storage Spaces protects data from partial and complete disk failures by maintaining copies on multiple disks. On read failures, Storage Spaces is able to read alternate copies, and on write failures (as well as complete media loss on read/write) it is able to reallocate data transparently.

REFS provides disk reliably and efficiently and is resilient to disk corruptions with integrity streams protecting file content against all forms of data corruption.

Another example of its protection properties is "bit rot" when parts of the disk develop corruptions over time that go largely undetected since those parts are not read frequently. By the time they are read and detected, the alternate copies may have also been corrupted or lost due to other failures:

In order to deal with bit rot, we have added a system task that periodically scrubs all metadata and Integrity Stream data on a ReFS volume residing on a mirrored Storage Space. Scrubbing involves reading all the redundant copies and validating their correctness using the ReFS checksums. If checksums mismatch, bad copies are fixed using good ones.

Microsoft added that they expect many customers will use ReFS in conjunction with mirrored Storage Spaces, in which case corruptions will be automatically and transparently fixed. But in the rare case where a volume on a mirrored space gets corrupted ReFS will implement “salvage,” a feature that will remove the corrupt data from the namespace on a live volume.

It does seem ReFS should help maintain our data’s integrity and protection much more than NFFS did, and we look forward to testing its abilities in a future article.

Microsoft’s full article introducing ReFS and an FAQ can be found here.

ReFS File System for Windows Server 8 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The article starts out be asking why WHS 2011? and then goes through the setting up process of Microsoft’s latest Home Server offering. Backups, Add-Ins, remote access and alerts & notifications are also taken a look at too.

Although the article is aimed at computer repair technicians the article is a good read for anyone interested in WHS.

Manage your Home Office with WHS 2011 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

WHS 2011 Compared to WHS Version 1 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Here is their press release:

AuthenTec Acquires Proxure to Enhance Security Offerings for Consumers, Small Businesses

MELBOURNE, Fla., January 9, 2012 – AuthenTec (NASDAQ: AUTH), a leading provider of mobile and network security, today announced that it has acquired the assets of Proxure, Inc., a provider of syncing and cloud-based storage services for PCs and mobile devices. AuthenTec has acquired all of the assets of Proxure, including all software products and intellectual property. Proxure’s portfolio, which includes its popular KeepVault secure backup service and KeepSync software which synchronizes a user’s identity across multiple devices, will become part of AuthenTec’s Software and eCommerce portfolio and will also be incorporated into future product offerings. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“The addition of Proxure’s KeepVault and KeepSync products further expands the AuthenTec portfolio of convenient security and identity management solutions for consumers and small businesses,” said Tom Aebli, Vice President of Software and eCommerce for AuthenTec. “This strategic acquisition allows AuthenTec to offer both local and cloud-based identity management solutions in conjunction with our TrueSuite® Software and Eikon™ family of USB fingerprint readers. By combining cloud-storage solutions from Proxure with effortless personal security of AuthenTec’s fingerprint sensors, AuthenTec will be uniquely positioned to offer online backup and identity sync solutions across tablets, laptops and smartphones with the simple swipe of a finger.”

“We look forward to building on Proxure’s product offerings, both direct to consumers and for electronics OEMs, now as part of AuthenTec,” said Andreas Benamou, CEO of Proxure. “Proxure’s products are a great strategic fit for AuthenTec, which continues to expand its mobile and network security portfolio. Now, as part of AuthenTec, we will be able to leverage the AuthenTec product portfolio, strong customer relationships and mobile and network security focus for a unique solution offering.”

Proxure was founded in 2005 by consumer software experts from Roxio, Sonic, and VERITAS. The Company’s single goal was to create innovative user-friendly software to better connect today’s digital lifestyles. Proxure helps enables users to enjoy a converged digital life across a broad range of devices from personal computers to mobile phones and more.

AuthenTec’s software and eCommerce offering includes identity management software that helps people better manage their digital identities and online social networking, USB fingerprint readers for one-touch security that can easily be added to a notebook or desktop PC, and PC and mobile applications that enhance security and the user experience.

To recognize the addition of Proxure to AuthenTec, during the month of January the AuthenTec Web store is offering a free Eikon fingerprint reader for anyone purchasing a one-year agreement for Proxure’s KeepVault online backup service. By combining the Eikon Fingerprint Reader with the KeepVault product, consumers will enjoy single swipe access to their cloud-stored data — the first of a kind offering to protect personal data storage in the cloud with a single finger swipe. To sign up for KeepVault and obtain a free AuthenTec Eikon reader, visit store.authentec.com.

About AuthenTec

AuthenTec is a leading provider of mobile and network security. The Company’s diverse product and technology offering helps protect individuals and organizations through secure networking, content and data protection, access control and strong fingerprint security on PCs and mobile devices. AuthenTec encryption technology, fingerprint sensors and identity management software are deployed by the leading mobile device, networking and computing companies, content and service providers, and governments worldwide. AuthenTec’s products and technologies provide security on hundreds of millions of devices, and the Company has shipped more than 100 million fingerprint sensors for integration in a wide range of portable electronics including over 15 million mobile phones. Top tier customers include Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Fujitsu, HBO, HP, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Orange, Samsung, Sky, and Texas Instruments. Learn more at authentec.com or follow us on twitter.com/authentecnews.

Throughout January when you sign up to KeepVault for 1 year AuthenTec are offering a free Eikon  fingerprint reader valued at $25

KeepVault offerings can now be found here (including for Windows Home Server) and here.

KeepVault Acquired by AuthenTec is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

We explained about Windows 8′s feature called Storage Spaces in our article the other day entitled Drive Extender Reincarnated in Windows 8?

For those of you who haven’t read the original article yet I recommend you head over to MSDN to read it. In the meantime the blogosphere have given there opinion on Storage Spaces and below we list other blogs with similar articles which you may be interested in:

• wegotserved – The Spirit of Drive Extender is Alive and Well – It’s Called Storage Spaces in Windows 8
• Mary-Jo Foley @ ZDNet – Microsoft: More on Windows 8′s coming drive-extender-style storage (A quick overview at the MSDN article)
• ghacks.net – Why Windows 8′s “Storage Spaces” tool should be used only with care
• ars technica – Windows 8 Storage Spaces detailed: pooling redundant disk space for all
• THE VAR GUY – Microsoft Windows 8 Storage Spaces Reinvents Drive Extender

The Media’s View on Storage Spaces is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The latest edition of the BYOB podcast is up and this week its all about Data Recovery, Encryption and Hard Drives:

…we have the pleasure of being joined by Scott Moulton owner/founder of myharddrivedied.com.  We had a blast and learned an incredible amount about data recovery, hard drives, SSDs, and encryption…Get comfortable as this 2:10 minutes and every minute is a learning experience.

Episode 73 of the BYOB podcast is one you should defiantly listen to.

The BYOB Podcast Episode 73 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Alex from DrivePool posted the following remarks:

I knew about storage spaces in Win 8 for a while, but Microsoft’s blog post explained a lot.

Obviously, this is a very bad thing for DrivePool. When Microsoft enters a market they dominate because of their sheer size. Plus, it seems like they’ve really built up an extensive system, so they seem serious about it.

I guess I’ll make some quick remarks:

• MS’s solution is soft-RAID like and not file based. A core requirement for DrivePool has always been to store your files in plain NTFS format for easy recovery. Black box RAID like solutions are only readable as long as the software functions properly.
• MS’s solution recovers from multiple drive failures. DrivePool can store more than two copies of a file without a problem. This has always been in the architecture. It’s not exposed in the UI now.
• MS has "parity" redundancy. An interesting idea. Need more information on exactly what this means, how it works, and what the impact is.
• MS can swap drives to a different system, background reconstruction of duplicated parts. DrivePool M4 does this. In addition, your files are stores as standard NTFS files so they are readable on any Windows system for emergency recovery purposes.
• MS can "provision" extra free space. In other words, from what I understand, you will see more free space available than there actually is on the pool, allowing you to "reserve" space for future expansion. I see this as a disadvantage and a completely unnecessary complication.
  DrivePool always shows you the actual free space which can dynamically increase / decrease as you add and remove drives from the pool. This is probably a consequence of using a RAID-like system.
• MS has "stand-by" disks. Again, very RAID-like. Need more information on exactly how this works. DrivePool has no stand-by disks. I guess a similar feature in DrivePool would need to mark a disk as suspect and have the balancer move all the files off it.
• To add a disk to MS’s system, the disk needs to be provisioned in some form and must be wiped. DrivePool doesn’t erase / format disks when it adds them. You can even store non-pooled data on a pooled disk.

I’m sure there are advantages / disadvantages on both sides. MS’s solution does seem like a very competent and compelling implementation.

Where does this leave DrivePool? What about a Windows 8 port?

DrivePool M4 and eventually 1.0 will get released for WHS 2011 (and similar) in Q1 2012. This will not change.

I’m not sure that there is a need for a port to Win 8 since pooling functionality is essentially built-in. Also, a port to older OSes doesn’t make sense as they’re going out the door.

The full thread with all comments can be found here.

Storage Spaces vs DrivePool is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Many of us have been using Windows Home Server Drive Extender and have been hoping for an approach architected more closely as part of NTFS and integrated with Windows more directly. In building the Windows 8 storage improvements, we set out to do just that and developed Storage Spaces…

…some of us have used (or are still using), the Windows Home Server Drive Extender technology which was deprecated. Storage Spaces is not intended to be a feature-by-feature replacement for that specialized solution, but it does deliver on many of its core requirements.

So for those of you not in the know, this is what Storage Spaces will allow:

• Organization of physical disks into storage pools, which can be easily expanded by simply adding disks. These disks can be connected either through USB, SATA (Serial ATA), or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI). A storage pool can be composed of heterogeneous physical disks – different sized physical disks accessible via different storage interconnects.
• Usage of virtual disks (also known as spaces), which behave just like physical disks for all purposes. However, spaces also have powerful new capabilities associated with them such as thin provisioning (more about that later), as well as resiliency to failures of underlying physical media.

Data stored in the pool can also be automatically protected through mirroring across two or more disks as well as a parity attribute which adds redundancy information to your data, thereby enabling automatic data reconstruction in the event of physical disk failure.

A new feature which was not available in DE is thin provisioning, which allows the creation of a pool that is larger than the physical storage available within the pool, a process of having just "the exact required amount" of server space at the time it is required. For example allowing previously allocated physical capacity to be reclaimed safely whenever files are deleted.

As what does this mean for the future of Windows Home Server now that its previously implemented DE technology will now be made available in Microsoft’s next operating System? Who knows, but in the meantime I recommend you head over to the Building Windows 8 blog and have a read of this comprehensive post which explains  a lot more details on the Storage Spaces technology and also contains a 21 item FAQ – Recommended reading for the Windows Home Server enthusiast!

Drive Extender Reincarnated in Windows 8? is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The weeks storage news and CES 2012 preview is up in episode 168 of The Home Server Show podcast with Dave, Jim and John.

All this plus the weeks Home Server news which you can find here.

The Home Server Show Podcast Episode 168 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The N40L comes with a 250GB SATA hard drive, which is ideal for installing the operating system on and with free shipping included the $319.99 asking price is a good deal

HP ProLiant N40L Ultra Micro Tower Server System AMD Turion II Neo N40L

HP MicroServer with 8GB Memory for $320 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Episode 72 of the BYOB podcast has just been uploaded:

"2011 Tech Faves, Tim’s server woes, Mike’s ESXi update, Michael’s Crossfire, AMD 7970 specs released, facebook client, AppRap"

For all Build Your Own Box enthusiasts, you can catch episode 72 here.

The BYOB Podcast Episode 72 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The Riley (Home Server) Storage Unit prices have been reduced, ie the 4TB unit has seen a £150 price reduction, the 8TB a £200 price reduction, and the 12TB SU12 (no previous price) is now listed at £869 – which is excellent value for a RAID protected 4x HDD appliance that is not only beautiful, but near silent too (no fans).

Plus if you order at the same time a Riley Server + Storage box combo there is FURTHER £99+VAT saving to be made, if ordered with the following coupon code N114R5Y0UPZ. But hurry as this code expires in early January.

More details on the SU (Storage Units) can be found here.

Riley Home Server Price Reductions is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Their comprehensive review looks at the design and build of the DX4000, its performance and power consumption.

In conclusion the reviewer added:

WD accomplished what it wanted, bringing enterprise grade software and hardware that’s easy to use to the SMB with the Sentinel DX4000. As we look at the Sentinel as a potential line of many other NAS devices, Western Digital is certainly pointed in the right direction and poised to be a major player in the NAS market.

You can read the full review here.

Western Digital Sentinel DX4000 Review is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Episode 167 of The Home Server Show podcast is up

And in this weeks edition:

John, Jim, and Dave discuss some news for the first half and then Jim and DVN interview the developer of the Drobo for WHS add-in.  It’s a good listen even if your a Drobo fan or not.  It should give you a good insight into what it takes to get an idea coded up for a Windows Home Server add-in.

You can listen/download episode 167 from here.

The Home Server Show Podcast Episode 167 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

And if you send in the rebate card you get an extra $20 off bring the price down to just $299.99 – Bargain!

You can find all the details here.

HP ProLiant N40L and OCZ Agility 3 Combo for $320 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

The BYOB podcast is up and on this weeks episode:

• SkyDrive for iOS and WP7 reviewed
• An exploration into ESXi as a virtualization platform
• Initial impressions of the Fractal design Define R3 case
• HTC Titan/Focus S/iPhone4S/Skyrocket comments
• The new dashboard for XBOX

Plus lots more on episode 71 of the BYOB podcast.

The BYOB Podcast Episode 71 is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

Its the first 4TB HDD and was spotted on the Akiba PC Watch website selling for 26,800 yen (approx. $343). The 0S03361 drive has 32MB of cache, a SATA 6Gbps interface and has Hitachi’s CoolSpin technology which automatically controls the rotational speed of the spindle motor to balance power consumption and the noise level. The  4KB sector "Advanced Format" technology has also been adopted.

We are now just waiting for an official announcement from Hitachi, which as yet has not surfaced.

Hitachi First to Market 4TB Hard Drive is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!

For 2 days only if you use the coupon code MERRY30 at raxco.com you can get 30% off of the listed price of $39.99 for PerfectDisk 12 Home Server.
That brings the cost of this defragmentation tool for Windows Home Server users down to $27.77 – That’s a great saving!

More details on PerfectDisk Home Server can be found here.

30% Off PerfectDisk 12 Home Server is a post from: MS Windows Home Server - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server!