Please note I called this a program and not an Add-In since it runs as a program in WHS 2011.
Now there is at least one alternative to Drive Extender available for purchase called Drive Bender. For some people this means that Drive Bender could either be “the savior for WHS 2011″ or possibly a “doomsday for your data”.
In my readings of some of the forums, many people have used a software RAID but seem to bash a DE replacement. Honestly I’m not sure why people are as negative as they are about a 3rd party creating this.
The lack of DE certainly has slowed the adoption of WHS 2011 by increasing the complexity for many users who would like to upgrade but can’t as there isn’t a cost effective storage solution for them. In extensive reading of blog comments and forum discussions, I’ve noticed a strong skepticism regarding the lack of DE for WHS 2011 and the viability of a 3rd party DE replacement. In addition, there was a type of software RAID that duplicated files in case a hard drive failed.
If you had 2-500gb hard drives and 2 -1TB drives, Drive Extender would pool them together so it looked like 1-3TB drive. Drive Extender allows users to use any size hard drive (JBOD-Just A Bunch Of Drives) in their system and consolidate them so it looked like a single drive. You shall need at least a 1.4GHz single core x86-64 CPU, 2GB RAM and a 160GB hard disk drive plus there have been reports of incompatibility given that WHS2011 is based on Windows 2008 R2.With Windows Home Server 2011 out and running, the biggest complaint most users have is the lack of Drive Extender (DE) being incorporated into the operating system, which was included in WHS v.1. You won't be able to use it on a non 64-bit computer and the hardware requirements for WHS 2011 are much higher than for Windows 7 32-bit.
Some have also mentioned that the move could be linked to Apple's decision to cut the price of its equivalent OS, Lion server, to a rock bottom £34.99, down from around £210 for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Server OS with unlimited clients.įor most uses, Windows Home Server 2011 can be used as a cheaper OS replacement instead of Windows 7 Professional, which is more than twice as expensive in the UK plus you do get a few goodies as well. Wegotserved suggests that Microsoft's partners may have to hit targets in order to get goodies (like marketing budgets and coop funds) from the software giant and are therefore cutting the price of WHS2011 to boost sales (and get some free marketing). The price cut is not limited to the UK Newegg and Tigerdirect, two of the biggest online retailers in the US, have also cut the price of the OS At this point, two questions can be asked: Why has Microsoft cut the price of Windows Home Server 2011 so aggressively so early in the lifetime of the product, and can it replace a bog-standard installation of Windows 7? Microsoft has cut the price of its Windows Home Server 2011 operating system by more than half to £36.86, a price that includes VAT and delivery.