MSWHS - Your Personal Guide to Microsoft Windows Home Server

By Philip Churchill on August 31st, 2012

Add-In: StableBit DrivePool v1.2.0.6817 BETA

The beta release of StableBit DrivePool has been updated to support 3rd party balancing plug-in’s.

Here is the full change log for version 1.2.0.6817 BETA:

Enabled 3rd party balancing plug-in support.
To write your own plug-in see: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_-_Develop_Balancing_Plugins
Pool size chart vanished when pool had < 1KB of data.
Balance ratio will not decrease unless pool has > 1MB.
[D] Fixed real-time file size tracking issues related to multiple handles (will re-measure on upgrade).
Added Settings tab to the balancing settings window.
– Control when automatic balancing happens.
– Control automatic balancing triggers.
– Allow 3rd party balancers to start an immediate balancing pass at any time.

[D] = Driver was modified (reboot required after update)

More information on the beta release of StableBit DrivePool can be found here.

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By Philip Churchill on August 30th, 2012

Drive Bender 20% Limited Discount

Drive Bender have refreshed their website and to celebrate are offering a strictly limited 20% discount on all licenses of Drive Bender.

So if you are a WHS 2011 user then now is a good time to buy as Drive Bender for WHS will only cost you $15.95 USD instead of the regular $19.95.

Drive Bender.

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By Philip Churchill on August 30th, 2012

RAID Reliability Calculator

ServeTheHome have a RAID Reliability Calculator available.

ServeTheHome have a RAID Reliability Calculator which is a simple Simple MTTDL (Mean Time to Data Loss) Model:

“Simply put, this calculator will give you a fairly good idea regarding which RAID level is the most reliable given a number of drives. Also, if you do not believe manufacturer numbers, you can add things such as your own mean time between failure (MTBF) figures.”

If this is off interest to you, then you can find it here.

NOTE: This tool is currently in beta and feedback is appreciated

News • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on August 30th, 2012

HP PROLIANT N40L for £140 Delivered

ServersPlus have the HP PROLIANT N40L for just under £140 after cashback including free delivery.

The N40L costs £239.94 but you get the £100 cashback and free delivery by using coupon code MSFREENDUK bringing the total to just £139.94. Plus you will also receive a MicroServer themed cooler bag to keep your food and/or drinks cool whatever the weather.

All the details are here.

Deal of the Week • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on August 29th, 2012

Server Essentials–More Bench Marks

The PC Doc has updated his benchmarks for the Release Candidate of Server Essentials.

…things have not improved in terms of performance. If fact, some tests were a bit slower. I am using the same hardware in the same configuration as before for the testing. I will continue to test all releases including the soon to be RTM Server 2012. If you are going to spend for Server Essentials when it is released, spend the extra $100-150 for a inexpensive RAID card and get 2-3x the better better performance…

You can find the benchmarks here.

News • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on August 29th, 2012

Meet Ups for the Home Server Community

We have a couple of meet ups for you which may be of interest to the Home Server community.

Firstly Home Server Show are organizing the HSS Meet up 2012, their 2nd annual meet up which will take place on October, 20th, in a location TBD, although it is sure to be the North Indianapolis area.

If you are interested in going please RSVP which you can do here.

The Digital Lifestyle User Group are also organizing their user group meet up and RaspberryJam session.

Scheduled for September 22nd, it will take place at The Rose Centre (Lowton Civic Hall), it’s just off the M6 near Wigan half way between Warrington and Manchester in the UK

Tickets are priced at £3 for adults, under 16s free if accompanied by a paying adult.

More details on this event are available from here.

News • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on August 29th, 2012

A Deluxe Home Server Build

Hardware.info have updated their build sheet up for a deluxe Home Server.

Based around the Intel Pentium G620T processor with 4GB of RAM, a ASUS P8H77-I mini-ITX H77 motherboard housed in a Fractal Design Array R2 300W case. And all for £2,063.45 – Yikes!

You can find their component list here.

News • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on August 28th, 2012

Media on WHS not Populating on Windows 8?

We mentioned a tip the other day from Windows guru Paul Thurrott about getting your media library’s populated when using Windows 8.

If you are still having problems getting your media (especially photos) from Windows Home Server populating on your Windows 8 PC then Paul has some further information for you no why this is happening.

The Photos app will not display content from Windows 7 or WHS 2011 based machines that is shared through a homegroup

You can find Paul’s post here.

News • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on August 28th, 2012

CloudBerry Cloud Migrator Beta

CloudBerry have announced the beta availability of Cloud Migrator, a service that allows users transfer their files across different cloud storage services without installing any additional software.

All copy operations run inside the cloud (on the EC2 machine) and managed through the web interface.

The service allows users to copy files between different locations or accounts within one cloud storage provider as well as between different cloud storages. It’s a perfect solution to quickly migrate data from one Amazon S3 bucket to another or from Amazon S3 to Azure Blob Storage or OpenStack based Rackspace Cloud Files and vice versa.

Cloud Migrator also supports FTP so it can also be used to easily copy/move files from an FTP server to any of the supported cloud storage accounts with no need to implement complicated scripts. More cloud storage providers will be added in the future.

The service is free while in beta, but the data transfer is limited to 1 GB per account / month.

CloudBerry also state that in the near future they will be adding the scheduling options and the support for Amazon Glacier service and the ability to configure and schedule tasks right from CloudBerry Explorer freeware.

CloudBerry Cloud Migrator is available at http://sync.cloudberrylab.com/

Other Software • Windows Home Server

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By Philip Churchill on August 27th, 2012