Late last year, Microsoft "shot themselves in the foot" when they removed Drive Extender from their Windows Home Server and Small Business Server products, apparently due to "compatibility issues" when the company merged the two products together. Liveside reports that Microsoft has today made available the Windows Home Server Release Candidate.
Microsoft has tried to relieve the pressure since Drive Extender was removed late last year, and has added two new features; a "format my harddrive" and "move my folder" wizard. The wizards are designed to make it easier than manually adding a hard drive to a computer would be. The server product now prompts you through the "server health" notification area to let you know when a new drive is installed, and offers the wizards to assist the user.
Obviously this isn"t a replacement for Drive Extender, but it"s still a step in the right direction. Other than this, as far as we know, the update doesn"t bring anything new to the table in terms of features, instead, just a large amount of bug fixes before the code is made RTM.
The release candidates are available for download from Microsoft Connect now. Windows Home Server and Small Business Server 2011 are expected to be available for purchase in late 2011.