In our Dashboard Deep Dive we took a quick look at the Server Folders and Hard Drives tab. It is time to take a closer look at what Vail has to offer in these areas.
First, let’s take a quick look at the old vs the new.
The old and tired:
My Windows Home Server v1 Console looks a bit cluttered at the moment. After all, it is my production machine and my current test bed (not really a good thing) for add-ins. In the Server Storage tab, other than a overall graphic of the storage system, there really is not much to see or do.
On my system, I add a drive once in a while. I almost never remove a drive. And hopefully, I have to repair a drive even less than I have to remove one. It is nice to take a quick glance now and again to determine when I will need to add another drive. Other than that, quite boring.
Moving on to the Shared Folders tab, there actually is quite bit of useful information to glean.
It’s particularly useful to see where the space hogs are. Hmm. It would appear that I really need to delete some duplicate NCIS episodes! Other than options to add and remove folder options, there are a couple of additional useful controls, including Properties and Open. Properties provides some very useful information (when needed) and of course where you can enable folder duplication.
Open brings up Windows Explorer to view/manage the contents of the desired shared folder.
Shared Folders and Hard Drives in Vail
Windows Home Server Vail combines Server Storage and Shared Folders tabs under one top-level tab, which works for me, at least. You can toggle between the Summary View, which replaces v1’s Storage Pie Chart, a Storage (Hard Drives) tab
and the Folders (Server Folders) tab.
Unlike v1, you can sort the way items are viewed by clicking on the appropriate heading. The Name view (above) and the Used Space view (below), for example.
As in v1, you have the ability to view folder properties. Hopefully, you will notice that Client Computer backups are now “just” another folder, albeit without the ability to duplicate.
Client Computer folder properties:
