Drive Bender Is In The Home Stretch….

Today, we received word that the beta 4 of Drive Bender is out.  This is expected to be the last beta version.

First, from Drive Bender’s website, some background on what Drive Bender is:

Drive Bender is state of the art storage pool technology for Microsoft Windows.

Drive Bender takes single point storage to the next level. Inspired by Microsoft’s “Windows Home Server” Drive Extender technology, Drive Bender is a product that provides the same level of functionality, and more, for all versions of the Microsoft Windows.

Now, the news!

Drive Bender beta 4 has finally landed. This is a monumental release as it represents the last major beta version. From here there will be a number of beta 4 updates (that should come quickly) and a release candidate.

The beta 4 release also signals the end of the beta program, with registration coming to a close very soon. With that in mind we would like to say a big thanks to all those that have helped in getting Drive Bender to this point.

Release v1.1.5.0 – beta (2011-06-21)
– Update: A new version of the WHS 2011 addin.
– Bug fix: WHS client backup could sometimes fail, this has been fixed.
– Bug fix: Drive balancing no longer balances Drive Bender specific files.
– Bug fix: Windows update no longer fails (permission issue fixed).
– Update: The drive merge functionality has been improved.
– Update The drive removal functionality has been improved.
– Update The drive add functionality has been improved.
– Added: Drive convert feature to convert an existing non pooled drive into a pooled drive.
– Added: Option – Smooth Stream. This is file read caching to improve file streaming performance (default = disabled).
– Added: Option – CRC file validation of duplicated files (default = enabled). Disabling this reverts to file size validation.
– Added: Option – Log level. The specifies the amount of logging taking place (default = none).
– Added: Option – Drive balancing. You can enable / disable balancing as required (default = enabled).
– Added: Option – Drive renaming. When adding a drive to the pool, it is now renamed to make its use obvious (default = enabled).
– Added: Option – Drive letter management. Allows Drive Bender to manage drive letters for drives added to, and removed from the pool (default = enabled). Note that due to a bug, this feature was disabled prior to release.
– Bug fix: Renaming and deleting files and folders should no longer fails with errors.
– Bug fix: Recycle bin support have been fixed.
– Bug fix: Remove Windows assigned mount points (i.e. drive letters) if there is a conflict with a Drive Bender mount point.
– Added: Pool recovery feature. This can recover a pool (or pools) from connect drive without any configuration information (to be uses with OS re-installs etc)
– Added: Pool configuration repair. Drive Bender now validates and repair broken configurations.
– Added: WHS running tasks and notification windows (full WHS notification integration to come).
– Known issue: Fault tolerant mode (i.e. when a drive is missing from the pool) is still not displaying duplicated files (will be fixed in the next update).
– Known issue: The WHS move folder feature throws an error (to be fixed in an update).
– Known issue: The opening of web links from the getting started tab are opening on the server, not the client.
– Known issue: Documentation incomplete.

You can download the latest version from http://www.drivebender.com/beta-download/

If you need support with Drive Bender, or have some feedback you would like to share. You can either email us at support@drivebender.com or visit the Drive Bender support site at http://support.drivebender.com

If you wish to get update information on Drive Bender’s on going development, please follow us on twitter at @drivebender

This is the next pooling add-in that I am testing, as soon as I wrap up the unprotected pool work that I am doing with Drive Harmony.  Stay tuned for my testing.  If you want to test it, go ahead and sign up now as the beta is closing soon.