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Author Topic: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature  (Read 1489 times)

Offline The Nstuff

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WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« on: November 23, 2010, 06:35:53 PM »
Cypher just pointed me to the horrible news:
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/windowshomeserver/archive/2010/11/23/windows-home-server-code-name-vail-update.aspx


For everyone who uses and loves WHS, i would suggest you post a comment and tell them that the decision to drop the drive extender feature is a huge mistake.


And for those that don't know, WHS is an awesome MS server product.  Version 1 is based on Windows 2003 server. On top it adds a robust backup feature of all windows pcs on your network.  It comes with a free <yourname>.homeserver.com domain that points to your home server and allows you to access files you've shared and upload new ones, you can rdp to any computer on your network that you have setup to do so.  And the key feature is you can add a ton of hard drives you have laying around (80GB, 100GB, 500GB) all to the server and it will treat them all as a single contiguous drive.  You can then right-click on a folder and make WHS duplicate the contents on two physical drives.  Basically a robust software-raid solution with the best elements of both 0 and 1.  Version 2 "Vail" is based on Windows 2008 R2 and although they are upgrading certain key features, the fact that they are dropping the Drive Extender feature is a huge blow.


Really good write-up of the feature and MS' decision to remove it:
http://www.wegotserved.com/2010/11/23/microsoft-abandons-development-windows-home-server-drive-extender/

« Last Edit: November 23, 2010, 06:41:14 PM by nstuff »
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Offline vincegun

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #1 on: November 23, 2010, 06:47:53 PM »
I use server '03 with my HP home server. Love this little beast. So what's going on is that "Vail" (more like, BAIL... HA HA!) isn't going to allow you to hot-plug in a random drive and be able to dynamically add the spare 500gigger you have laying around to your storage pool? Do I have that right? All because spinning drives nowadays have so much damn space that there's *obviously* no need to continually add in more than....4-5 drives to a small home or business server?

Edit: Because we all know that modern day platter-based drives NEVER fail and you would NEVER need to replace or duplicate data really, really quickly.
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Offline sully!

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #2 on: November 23, 2010, 09:02:32 PM »
Bug report filed on Microsoft Connect for this. I LOL'd, then I voted it as important ;)

https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/feedback/details/624029/add-drive-extender-back-to-vail?wa=wsignin1.0
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Offline The Nstuff

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #3 on: November 23, 2010, 09:27:23 PM »
Quote from: sully on November 23, 2010, 09:02:32 PM
Bug report filed on Microsoft Connect for this. I LOL'd, then I voted it as important ;)

https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/feedback/details/624029/add-drive-extender-back-to-vail?wa=wsignin1.0


nice link, i logged in and voted it up too as well as commented.  it's currently got 759 votes.
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Offline vincegun

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #4 on: November 24, 2010, 05:00:54 AM »
Page not found
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Offline Redmist

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #5 on: November 24, 2010, 06:11:01 PM »
Hmm, maybe I should check out WHS...

I'm currently a FreeNAS user.
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Offline sully!

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #6 on: November 24, 2010, 07:39:22 PM »
Quote from: vincegun on November 24, 2010, 05:00:54 AM
Page not found
Try again. I saw on another forum that the page for this wasn't coming up for awhile but later came back online. It came up for me just now.
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Offline vincegun

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #7 on: November 25, 2010, 08:34:17 AM »
Weird, still not working for me. Bah.
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Offline vincegun

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #8 on: December 01, 2010, 02:28:08 PM »
Noooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Another stab in the heart of WHS.

http://gizmodo.com/5703422/hp-says-goodbye-to-windows-home-server-market
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Offline The Nstuff

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #9 on: December 01, 2010, 06:05:53 PM »
they should just turn the idea of WHS into a software package that can run on any Windows system (Win7, Win Server 2k3/8, etc).  If i could run the software bits of WHS on a win7 box, then i could have Media Center with tv capabilities and all my media on the same box.  That would be massively full of win.
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Offline vincegun

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #10 on: December 01, 2010, 07:43:54 PM »
That's the best idea I've heard in a while. Someone give this man a medal.
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Offline decepticon

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #11 on: December 01, 2010, 08:08:03 PM »
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Offline sully!

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #12 on: December 01, 2010, 11:20:23 PM »
So you'd be backing up to....yourself? Sorry, that's a bag of fail. Nothing's stopping you from storing your media on a standard server/Win7 box now. How would this setup be something special enough to get me to part with my money for it, like WHS v1 did so easily because of how different(ly awesome) it was from other products?
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Offline The Nstuff

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #13 on: December 02, 2010, 06:03:47 AM »
um, so the WHS server i have hooked up to my tv could instead be Windows 7 running the WHS software on top.  I don't know of any server-specific feature MS relies on in WHS v1 that would mean that it couldn't run on win7.  I could still load it up the pc with random hard drives for backups and file storage, but it would also have the features of win7 that MS won't let us have (media center for example for cablecard tv tuner functionality).
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Offline sully!

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Re: WHS Vail to DROP drive extender feature
« Reply #14 on: December 04, 2010, 06:05:11 PM »
Gotcha, I misunderstood your postulation. Carry on good sir.
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