It’s been a long time since i rock n rolled!

Well rock and rolled may not be 100% accurate, but you get the idea… “it’s been a long time since I posted on the blog” just doesn’t really roll off the tongue. Anyway we have been busy with software releases and updates (and I did sneak off to France for a month). Here is where we are at.

First up, our initial Cloud Xtender release had some strange quirks with some users reporting files not syncing or not syncing reliably. We did release a number of updates to address these issues, however we were never able to replicate them, which made fixing them difficult at best. So after the v1.4.7.0 release, we decided to go back and develop a new version of the sync engine (code name “Transporter”). The “Transporter” engine improves, syncing, streaming and caching for remote files, and syncing for mirrored files, and was released in the v1.5 update. We highly recommend all users update to this version as it also contains a number of important bug fixes.

So what’s next for Cloud Xtender? In the very next release we are adding the ability to add cloud folders to an existing Windows drive (aka drive C). Currently you connect to cloud services by adding a “cloud drive” to your system, that is a new drive letter that shows the contents of your cloud services. With this new update, you can add a folder instead of the drive letter, and this folder can be mapped anywhere on your existing Windows drive (you can switch between either). Another new feature is an updated interface and a “getting started wizard”. In short this will allow new users to get up and going with a single cloud service in seconds, with minimal understanding… well that’s the theory anyway. We are expecting this version, flagged as v1.6, to be released later this month (FYI – we will be posting a minor update, v1.5.2.0 prior to this, it has some caching performance tweaks). Following on from that release, we are also working on an update which addresses the outstanding OneDrive performance issue… stay tuned!

Now on to Drive Bender news. We just released v2.3.9.0 which has many tweaks including a number of Windows 10 specific fixes. Following on from this we are working on another minor update that addresses a handful of smaller problems that have been reported by users, we expect this release to be out later in the month. Interestingly we have an increasing number of users using Drive Bender with SnapRAID, we are looking at adding a “SnapRAID mode” which would make using Drive Bender with SnapRAID a snap! (see what I did there!)… this may or may not make it into the next update, it really depends on how far we take such a feature. It would be great to hear from users to get their feedback, lets us know via support.

After this we will be moving forward with the rest of the outstanding v2 features (better late than never hey), first out of the gate will be cloud duplication. And to answer a commonly asked question, no you will not need a Cloud Xtender license to duplicate to the cloud… although you will need an internet connection 😉

Finally on to PoolHD… and yes, there is a Windows 10 compatible version coming. I know this is taking some time, and we’re super sorry, but we are getting there. In fact it is being working at this very moment (well not entirely true, I’m writing this at this very moment, anyway). All going well, the plan is to have a beta this month. This will be a short beta cycle as most of the underlying code is based on Drive Bender, so we know it will be rock solid! Will there be any new features? Well the short answer is… ahhhh, no. We want PoolHD to be a no fuss pooling solution, If uses want more bells and whistles, they really need to look at it’s big brother, Drive Bender.

Anyway, there is someone standing next to me implying that writing a blog post is not really work… I beg to differ, this and after work beers at the pub are all nose to the grind stone activities 😉