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Vail is now Windows Home Server 2011, Drive Extender's officially dead
Microsoft announced months ago that the artist formerly known as Vail -- now officially known as Windows Home Server 2011 -- was dropping Drive Extender functionality. Though we were given hope that the feature might be reinstated, the release candidate of WHS2011 went out to testers today... sans Drive Extender's 'drive pooling for dummies' capability. In its place, Microsoft has included a Move Folder Wizard that alerts you when a new hard drive has been added (for those who were visited by the HDD fairy without their knowledge, no doubt) and walks you through formatting and partitioning your new drive. However, partition size is limited to 2TB for it to work with the server backup feature, so your massive collection of ripped Blu-rays will require a veritable alphabet of drive letters. Not all the news is bad though, as the dev team has enabled Shadow Copy in the OS to allow data time traveling in case you accidentally delete something. If that sounds good to you, hit the source link below and get your download on.
Steve Ballmer looking into removal of Drive Extender from Windows Home Server
Windows Home Server hasn't exactly taken the consumer market by storm, showing yet again that people are more interested in shiny new toys than protecting their precious data. Still, there's been a huge amount of negative backlash from Microsoft's recent decision to drop Drive Extender from the next release of WHS, currently codenamed Vail. Drive Extender is the tech that enables multiple physical disks to act as a single logical volume, making it easy for even non-techy folks to add more and enable data replication. Terry Walsh over at We Got Served was similarly taken aback by the decision and took the opportunity to drop a note to Big Poppa Steve Ballmer. He got a response: From: Steve Ballmer Sent: 26 November 2010 05:30 To: Terry Walsh Subject: RE: MVP Feedback – Windows Home Server "Vail" Crisis Let's look into it Yes, it's a short response, and it course could mean anything or, indeed, nothing, but it is at least a response and a positive sign that the huge outcry among fans of Windows Home Server can indeed make its way to the top of the executive chain. Now we just wait to see what comes rolling back down...
