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I just checked Connect & there is a Suggestion there (in the feedback area) to not remove DE, I also voted for it.
I never had any problem w/ DE & think its a good feature to have in a home server.

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DE is Drive Extender.

From WikiPedia

Drive Extender
Windows Home Server Drive Extender is a file-based replication system that provides three key capabilities:[15]

Multi-disk redundancy so that if any given disk fails, data is not lost
Arbitrary storage expansion by supporting any type of hard disk drive (Serial ATA, USB, FireWire etc.) in any mixture and capacity — similar in concept to JBOD
A single folder namespace (no drive letters)
Users (specifically those who configure a family's home server) deal with storage at two levels: Shared Folders and Disks. The only concepts relevant regarding disks is whether they have been "added" to the home server's storage pool or not and whether the disk appears healthy to the system or not. This is in contrast with Windows' Logical Disk Manager which requires a greater degree of technical understanding in order to correctly configure a RAID array.

Shared Folders have a name, a description, permissions, and a flag indicating whether duplication (redundancy) is on or off for that folder.

If duplication is on for a Shared Folder (which is the default on multi-disk Home Server systems and not applicable to single disk systems) then the files in that Shared Folder are duplicated and the effective storage capacity is halved. However, in situations where a user may not want data duplicated (e.g. TV shows that have been archived to a Windows Home Server from a system running Windows Media Center), Drive Extender provides the capability to not duplicate such files if the server is short on capacity or manually mark a complete content store as not for duplication.

Additional information can be found on the Windows Home Server Technical Brief for Drive Extender.

A known limitation of Drive Extender is that it in some cases changes date/timestamp of directories and files when data is moved around between disks. According to Microsoft this is currently expected behaviour. This causes unexpected behaviour when using clients that sort media based on date. Examples are Xbmc, MediaPortal, Squeezebox Server. The aforementioned programs will work fine with WHS; however, files may appear out of order due to this caveat.

Drive Extender Cancellation

On 11/23/2010, Microsoft announced that Drive Extender would be removed from Windows Home Server (Vail).[16] This announcement has lead to public outcry in the announcement's comments section. Criticism of Drive Extender's removal is mainly related to it being seen as a core feature of Windows Home Server and a key reason for adoption. As a replacement for Drive Extender, Microsoft states that OEMs will use RAID on their Windows Home Server products.

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the MS WHS team is letting the Beta Refresh expire:

Vail public preview to expire on 1-10-11

Thanks for taking the time to test Windows Home Server “Vail” with us. As is the case with most betas, the trial period for “Vail” is limited in nature. The public preview for “Vail” will expire on January 10^th, 2011.


On this date, public preview versions of “Vail” will no longer be functional and we will not release a patch to extend the preview period. If you have important data on your “Vail” server it is recommended that you migrate the data to another location.


It is our plan to offer a new beta version in about 4 to 6 weeks. Once the new beta is available we will announce it here and on our team blog.

Thanks again for all your help testing “Vail”!

MS Vail forum

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Last week I Dl a copy of the new WHS 2011 RC (not code name Vail anymore), burned it to a DVD & installed it.
The install took 44 minutes.

I backed up the (old) Main Rig, that took 18 hr., 30 min., then tried a restore of the Win7 x86 Ult to the new Main rig (also a Intel CPU & ASUS MB) that took 1 hr. 36 min. sadly the OS wouldn't boot no matter what I tried using DBP & the Win7 DVD. I'll spare you the gruesome details o/ what I did w/ Win7 then.

Anyway, I'll probably buy the new WHS once its released even though the DE feature has gone bye bye.

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Last weekend I backed up the WHS 2011 System files & 2 PC backup folders/files to a external 1TB Hdd. That took 5+ hrs.

I also setup the **name.homeserver.com website & uploaded about 30GB of files to that.

The only problems w/ the website was setting the router to default settings, forwarding 2 ports, turning on UPnP & setting up a static IP addy in the WHS control panel, same process as done earlier in this thread.

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Last night I installed WHS2011 RC on VMware & gave it a once over.

This AM I tried shrinking the storage drive by 50% in the above install, that worked fine, created a new simple volume (unallocated space), then made it a "new volume" & renamed both drives for easy ID.
Next I tried this new beta add-in called "DrivePool" (it a DE type tool), it installed easy so I added both storage drives to the data pool using the DP add-in. That worked & was easy so next I tried removing 1 of the drives from the storage pool, that worked easy too.

This add-in may be a answer to MS removing the DE feature from WHS v2.

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WHS 2011 appears to have hit the RTM stage

Windows Home Server 2011 is Ready for Release
Today, the Home Server engineering team signed off the release version of WHS 2011. An exciting milestone which now starts the process to make it available for purchase.

Affordable and easy-to-use, Windows Home Server 2011 is the ideal solution to help families keep their important digital files and data automatically backed up, organized, and accessible from virtually anywhere.

To help with questions we hear during this time of the product release cycle, I have provided further guidance below. If you have a specific question, please feel free to post in comments, on our WHS forum.

•When will OEM’s offer WHS 2011? Many OEM’s and System Builders have already started building specific form factors and solutions based on WHS 2011. We expect to start seeing them in the market starting May.
•What languages is WHS 2011 available in? WHS 2011 will be released in 19 languages including Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan), Chinese (Hong Kong), Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.
•When will the Evaluation for WHS 2011 be made available? The evaluation experience for WHS 2011 will be released in early April.
•When will I be able to download WHS 2011 via my TechNet or MSDN subscription? WHS 2011 will be made available on MSDN and TechNet also in early April.
•What is the difference between V1 of WHS and WHS 2011? You can learn more about differences in our comparison datasheet.

Windows Home Server Blog

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The WHS 2011 Gold is on TechNet now, the Dl speed is decent ATM.