Experience Level: Expert

Drive Balancer is an application which runs on Window Home Server to spread files evenly across the various drives on your home server.

This program was designed to “even out” the data on a drive pool for WHS. The main purpose was when a person adds a drive to the pool, it doesn’t necessarily start getting used for a while. While Microsoft has made changes to the usage of the Landing Zone (as in it doesn’t exist anymore), some people’s systems might still be in a non “evened out” state as wish to correct this.

For a walk through of the tool running, checkout the walk_through.txt file in the download.

Developer: Beefcake

More Info: Download | Support Forum | Review

Release History

v1.05 (15.04.09)

• Attempting to solve problem where no files are moved on the system when D:\is filled prior to running Drive Balancer. Please read UPDATE NOTE for potential solution

• Fixed bug where calculation of free space on D: was not “worked around”. Refer to v1.03 history notes below. This fix will help systems that either a) don’t include D:\ in balancing b) tried to clear the landing zone

• Added programmable time interval for checking disk activity

• Added programmable disk activity threshold for restarting Drive Extender service

v1.04

• Fixed bug where D: was not always cleaned up
• Modified restarting of DE service to monitor disk activity. This will restart DE within seconds instead of 15 minutes. Should improve run time on systems with large files.

v1.03

• Handled bug where WHS returns free space of D: as (C: + D:)
• Fine tuned “crunching” algorithm so balancing should be better on different sized HDDs
• Added exception handling around creation of fake directories and fake files

v1.02

• Added option to allow D: to be part of balancing.
• Fixed bug where restarting DE would not occur and forward progress would likely not occur.

v1.01

• Fixed bug with option #2 and a drive was large enough to contain an equal amount of data.
• Added option for entering in your own data
• Added “quit” option in case all you wanted to do was clear the landing zone

Experience Level: Advanced

Drive Labeler updates the labels on the drives in the Storage tab of the Windows Home Server Console on the HP MediaSmart Server.

The drive labels are updated as follows:

• Drives are correctly labeled as SATA rather than SCSI.
• The drive bay location is appended to internal SATA drives
• External SATA drives are correctly shown as External rather than Internal.

Developer: Jerry McCollom

More Info: Download | Support Forum

Release History

v1.0.0.5

• Corrects the display for non-storage pool drives

v1.0.0.4

• Fixes a fat-finger logic error in the previous version.  I cleaned up my drive identifier detection code and have tested this version with internal and external drives to verify it works as advertised!

v1.0.0.3

• Fixes an exception condition that could occur when external SATA drives are connected.

v1.0.0.2

• Initial Release

Experience Level: Medium

Home Server SMART is a Windows Home Server (WHS) add-in that enables you to monitor the health of most of your hard disks attached to WHS. Home Server SMART examines the S.M.A.R.T. data exposed by your disks and determines the health of the disk. If problems are detected, Home Server SMART informs you which attribute(s) are critical or problematic, and it presents a summary of problems found. If the problems are serious, Home Server SMART will make a recommendation to you that you replace the disk.

Developer: Dojo North Software

More Info: Download | Support Forum

Release History

v1.0.1.21 (23rd January 2010)

• Initial release

Experience Level: Advanced

Windows Home Server Disk Management is an Add-In for Microsoft Windows Home Server. This Add-In is designed for users who need more detail about their server’s storage status than what the standard WHS Server Storage interface provides.

Features:

• Detailed information for each disk in your Windows Home Server
• Real-time temperature and activity monitoring
• Capacity indicators for individual disks
• Customizable disk names
• Customizable 3D wireframe representation of your server

You can use the information provided by Disk Management to identify, troubleshoot, and monitor the disks inside your server.

After building a 3D wireframe representation of your server using WHS Disk Management, you can select disks or drive bays to quickly identify the location and status of physical hard drives. The 3D wireframe can be rotated, moved, and zoomed in real-time.

Developer: Sam Wood

More Info: Download | Support Forum | Review

Release History

1.1.2.2001 (4th March 2010)

• Fixed service settings not being saved correctly

1.0.9.8

• Fixed: Resolved a rare crash if an ID number could not be found for a specific disk

1.0.9.7

For more, please see developer’s website.