Drive Bender Seeks to Bring Storage Pooling and Protection to All Versions of Windows

By on February 14, 2011 in News, Software, Windows Home Server

Over the last few days, the home server community has been enlivened by a number of storage pooling applications announced for Windows Home Server 2011. Over the weekend, we shared some brief information about one of those applications, Drive Bender.

Details about the product on the Drive Bender website were a little sketchy, so we got in touch with Anthony Smith from the developer, Division M to find out what’s in store.

Drive Bender comes in the form of a Windows driver and service, plus a configuration utility (which will take the form of a Dashboard add-in for Windows Home Server, and an app for other versions of Windows). An initial beta is planned for February 21st, but the Windows Home Server add-in may not be available until a subsequent beta release, so I’m told. Other platforms should have the driver, service and configuration utility available for that first beta, however.

Drive Bender was first conceived early last year, according to Division M. A “Drive Extender” style application was prototyped at the beginning of 2010 with the objective of releasing a product that would work with all versions of Windows. However, the concept was shelved when the company discovered that Microsoft would be releasing other platforms with DE, most notably SBS 2011 Essentials. With Microsoft cancelling Drive Extender in December, the Drive Bender project was resurrected.

The company describes the product as follows, “Drive Bender is state of the art, single point storage pool technology for Microsoft Windows. Drive Bender presents one or more hard drives as a single pool of drive space. In addition Drive Bender allows you to expand your storage seamlessly by adding new hard drives as needed. Drive Bender utilizes non-destructive, file system technology to provide the user with a reliable storage pool. To further ensure data safety, Drive Bender can automatically duplicate data on the fly for user specified folders.”

Features promised are as follows:

  • Seamlessly expand the storage – Add a new drive, or even a drive partition to the pool at any time.
  • Drive removal supported – Removing a drive from the pool forces content to be written to other drives in the pool.
  • Folder level data duplication – Data duplication can be configured at a folder level.
  • Support all Windows O/S’s – Includes support for all modern versions of Windows, including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Windows 2008 R2 and Windows Home Server 2011.
  • Non-destructive file system – Drive Bender uses a standard file system folder structure to store data. The drive can be read without Drive Bender being installed.
  • Native 64 bit support – Will support both x86 and x64 binaries.
  • Can utilize non-exclusive drives – Existing mounted partitions can be added to the pool.
  • Self-balancing – Data is written to the drives evenly, however should a new drive be inserted into the pool, data is redistributed according.

Certainly the prospect of DE-style storage pooling across the Windows suite is an exciting one, and clearly there will be a lot of development work and testing required to ensure the solution is robust. That work starts at the end of the month, and we look forward to checking out the first beta.

More: Drive Bender


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About Terry Walsh

Terry Walsh is the founding editor and owner of We Got Served. Since February 2007, the site has provided detailed coverage and analysis of the emerging home server category, and has subsequently grown into a trusted outlet for digital home news and reviews.
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  • ravenshin

    Brilliant! If Drive Bender proves to work out and brings the power of storage pooling to the broader windows market this could be a major storage game changer. I could imagine pooling on all my PCs especially with folder level duplication vs. Share level. The dream of a combined WMC with WHS becomes a practical reality. Where things get foggy is weather in the long run this type of technology saves or slays the home server. Time will tell.

    • Talex

      You hit the nail on the head with that post, 1st I think I thought when reading this was… hmmm WHS back vs WMC… it's really a tough call for me.

  • landrover

    Excellent. MS dropping DE was one step back. Several different parties filling the gap by developing alternatives is two steps forward. Healthy competition may push the developers in making a perfect solution.

  • http://homeservershow.com/forums John Zajdler

    By bringing this to Windows 7, I could see the Windows 7 Home Server. The Media Center version that we have all been wanting and begging for in WHS. We would just need to get the Backup solution worked out that could easily restore x86 & x64 PC's without hunting for drivers.

    • Talex

      Is home server show website down? I cannot get to it.

      • http://homeservershow.com/forums John Zajdler

        the blog & forums work for me. I have heard of issues with different browsers in the past.

        • Talex

          I cannot get at anything and have not been able to for the last 3 days…

        • Talex

          Maybe they blocked me, I have been very vocal of late in the forums there.

          • http://homeservershow.com/forums John Zajdler

            I'm a co-host and I enjoyed your comments. I'll let Dave know about your issue, hope to see you there soon.

  • DrewE

    I wish this company all the success they need in getting this working.
    I am sure there will be lots of people willing to beta test this software.
    I hope they get done what MS is obviously not capable of. (Which is NOT surprise)
    Go for the gusto! Don't let anybody get in your way.

  • DSLAM

    Ironically, another reason not to use WHS because if it works with your regular Windows installation then why bother? I hope Drive Bender turns out to be robust and dependable, I cant wait to use it.

    • Luca

      maybe wonderfull SIS backup with really simple bare metal/single file restore?

  • Kim

    My first thought would also be to just use it on Win 7 and combine my HTPC with server functionality.. I use Crashplan for remote backup anyways.

  • Vagge

    Will it also support shadowcopy?
    Or maybe I have to ask if it will preserve it.!?

  • Talex

    Thanks.

    • homeservershow

      We got it figured out Talex. Something in the firewall blocked your IP address. I don't actively block anyone or any comment at homeservershow.com. Just so everyone knows!

  • Jens

    I think MS shot themselves in the foot when they removed DE.
    Now we can just run Drive Bender on Win 7 with WMC and there is no need for WHS anymore.
    Why didn't MS keep DE v1 in 2011? If it was too hard to code then how come there is two 3rd-party alternatives already?
    As an current WHS v1 owner I am really sad because I think WHS is a great product and I was really looking forward to buy WHS 2011 but I just can't justify buying it anymore.
    WHS will sure be canceled within 6 months after release.

  • Grumpy

    If DriveBender does work as designed, what is the point of WHS? A working Windows 7 machine, as a backup device, using any backup software that suits you, e.g. Acronis. Also Remote Desktop, Remote Access, LogmeIn, XBMC, it goes on and on. Far more versitile than WHS.
    So does that mean we will be seeing the sales of WHS v2 falling as WDB 7 takes over?

    • Scott

      If that is all you use your Server for – then you might be right. But I use the Server for a lot more functionality than just back-ups. And having an always on, stable, externally facing project brings value.

  • Talex

    I doubt this will hurt potential sales of WHS 2011. Those who had to have DE would not have purchased 2011 in anycase and that would likely include those who would rather run this or another DE alternative on Windows 7. I myself would fall into this group and was not going to purchase WHS 2011, I might have with a DE add on, but that would even have been a push because there is nothing else in 2011 I had to have. There are those who want the 64bit server and to run enterprise type services on WHS and they would have purchased it either way, so WHS sales wll not doubt shrink some because of something like this, but I do not think it would be significantly different for the reasons stated.

  • shadowvlican

    nice to hear that other companies are stepping up to fill in Microsoft's failures

  • Mark Ettinger

    The great thing I can see is if you keep your data and your OS separated and if you lost your OS drive or if you can move the data drives from another PC with Drive bender installed, then install the new os or reinstall the old OS then install drive bender, reattach the data drives and add the drives back with no loss of data, that would be great. In WHSv1 if you reinstall the OS from scratch you have to backup all your data reinstall the drives format them then restore all the files.