What's new in Home Server SMART 2015 3.3.8.6
Aug 7, 2015
- Added support for Windows 10
- Windows 10 logo certified
- Windows 8.1 logo certified
- Fixed numerous bugs
New in Home Server SMART 2015 3.3.6.24 (Jun 25, 2015)
- Notify My Android stopped working due to NMA server deprecation on May 23, 2015. This release updates NMA so that Android users will start receiving NMA alerts again.
New in Home Server SMART 2015 3.3.5.19 (May 21, 2015)
- [HSS Classic only] Fixed an entry point not found DLL error that prevented some users from getting SMART data.
- Improved product update and other alerts so the alert would tell you which computer was affected.
New in Home Server SMART 2015 3.3.4.9 (May 21, 2015)
- Fixed Snarl alerts; they never worked right but now they use the Growl API so they should work. Snarl API doesn't send notifications from a Windows Service, so the Growl API is used instead.
- Fixed a bug where folks used to see valid data for a disk but saw a question mark after installing any 3.1 version.
- Removed Boxcar support. Boxcar was sold to another company which scrapped the API we used. We recommend using Pushover or Prowl instead.
- Enhanced SSD support; tested on additional SSDs.
- Lots of minor bug fixes; many, many minor bugs and annoyances. Also included some performance improvements.
New in Home Server SMART 2013 3.1.10.22 (May 21, 2015)
- Fixed a bug in the how the service shuts down on a system reboot or shutdown, which may cause an unclean shutdown alert to be sent the next time Windows is started.
- Various minor bug fixes and performance improvements.
New in Home Server SMART 2013 3.1.9.25 (May 21, 2015)
- Fixed a bug in the unclean shutdown alert that may lead to a service crash.
New in Home Server SMART 2013 3.1.9.15 (May 21, 2015)
- Added Pushover notification support. Pushover is a mobile notification platform supported by Android and Apple iOS devices
- Added a notification that alerts you when certain power events are detected. This can alert you if the computer switches to/from battery power and possible battery problems. This notification can be turned off
- Added a notification that warns you of an unclean (non-graceful) system shutdown/reboot. This is an indication the computer may have blue-screened (BSOD) or was powered down without a proper system shutdown. Repeated such notifications may indicate a problem with Windows or possibly malware. This notification can be turned off
- Support for Indilinx Barefoot 3 SSD controllers, which includes new OCZ SSDs
- Support for LAMD SSD controllers, which includes new Seagate 600 and Pro 600 SSDs
- Created framework for integration with Windows PowerShell
- Resolved a blue screen error (DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION) that may occur in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 under certain disk disconnect/reconnect scenarios when using Windows Storage Spaces
- Fixed numerous small UI bugs and annoyances reported by users
New in Home Server SMART 2013 3.1.6.8 (May 21, 2015)
- Added support for disks attached to many SAS controllers
- Added support for disks attached to many CSMI-based controllers, or those with CSMI-based drivers
- Added support for latest Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) drivers
- Added support for WD Red NAS disks
- Removed thermal shutdown and backup limitations from Home edition. All WindowSMART editions now include all features, without limitation
- Tray icon changes color to yellow or red when problems are detected
- Various bug fixes and performance improvements
New in Home Server SMART 2013 3.0.14.26 (May 21, 2015)
- Made WindowSMART main window expandable in size; can be maximized
- Improved developer debug reporting
- Fixed error that appeared when removal of a physical disk from a Windows 8 Storage Space creates a "phantom disk" because the disk record still exists in the Storage Space
- Storage Space phantom disks are now reported as such in the UI, and alerts are generated for them
- Improved UI so a user cannot click Query Disks and/or Fast Refresh repeatedly while a refresh operation was in progress
- Updated group policy template to support developer debugging, including preventing the user from sending reports or sending reports to an internal FTP Server
- Updated list of known virtual disks
New in Home Server SMART 2013 3.0.14.7 (May 21, 2015)
- Windows 8 logo certified.
- Added developer debug reporting via secure FTP with encrypted Zip file.
- Added SSL email capability.
- Fixed crash that may have occurred if Growl alerting was not enabled.
- Fixed installer problem - missing VC++ 2010 runtime. (2/14 re-release).
- Fixed update checker problem that may cause service crash.
- Fixed data export which may have contained incorrect data.
New in Home Server SMART 2013 3.0.13.5 (Jan 7, 2013)
- The former resolved a number of bugs, most notably the “not found” error that appeared in Windows 8 and Server 2012 when third party drive pooling software like Drive Bender or StableBit is used. The other biggie was that sorting the list of disks would cause the list to disappear for 5-10 seconds before reappearing. There were a few other minor tweaks and fixes.
- Unfortunately, the build we released in December introduced a bug in the update checker code. After yesterday’s build was posted, this became apparent. Several users contacted us about getting an alert every 2 hours that an update was available. The update checker should check at most twice per day, not 12 times per day. Most users indicated that twice per day is too much, and so we revised it to once every 4 days.
- And so version 3.0.13.5 contains all of the fixes from yesterday’s build, plus fixes the broken update checker.
New in Home Server SMART 2.0.10.28 (Jun 1, 2012)
- I recently became aware of a potentially serious bug in the first gold release of Home Server SMART v2.0 (v2.0.8.25). The bug was one that may cause old, incorrect data to display in the UI if you replaced a disk without restarting the HSS service or rebooting the server.
- The problem was that the UI code neglected to check the status of the "IsActive" flag, and thus it was possible for two (or more) disks to be saved in the Registry with the same "DevicePath" value (i.e. \\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3). If this happened, if the "old" disk had a device ID alphabetically earlier than the "new" disk, the UI code would encounter the "old" disk first and display its data. As an example, one person reported to me they replaced a disk with a bunch of bad sectors, only for the UI to tell them they had bad sectors on the brand new disk!
- If the service was restarted or the server rebooted, the problem would not appear because the DevicePath field is always reset on a service restart or reboot; a service restart or reboot would also correct the problem. However, this was nonetheless a bug and thus demanded attention to fix.
New in Home Server SMART 2.0.8.25 (Sep 19, 2011)
- New Features:
- Home Server SMART runs as a Windows Service. Disks are monitored automatically every 3 minutes (configurable) and health alerts are accordingly raised in WHS. Polling can be done as little as once per minute, up to once every two hours. The service runs and monitors continuously whether or not you are logged into the WHS Console.
- USB disk support. Many USB external enclosures with SMART-capable disks will expose their SMART data that Home Server SMART can use to display full health details. Not all USB enclosures are supported.
- Double-click feature in SMART details. Double-click on any SMART attribute for any disk to get a more in-depth look at that attribute.
- Added a green starburst icon next to attributes Home Server SMART classifies as super critical. This does not mean the attribute is causing a problem; rather, it is HSS’ way to highlight attributes HSS watches more closely.
- Added an examination of each attribute’s Flags field, which tells whether or not an attribute is Critical, as well as whether it’s an error rate, event counter, self-preserving, statistical or performance.
- Added an icon to the physical disk list which gives a quick visual indication of a disk’s health.
- Added the ability to ignore certain problems (i.e. bad sectors); problems that are ignored don’t generate health alerts again unless the number of events increases, or the SMART threshold is exceeded.
- Added the ability to delete stale (no longer installed) disks from the Registry.
- Added the ability to reset the user-configurable settings, ignored problems or everything. Resetting everything deletes all information about all disks and starts over fresh.
- Added the ability to stop and start the Windows service.
- Added a Settings button to pull up Home Server SMART settings directly.
- Added Windows event logging.
- Added Debugging controls to the settings, which can be used if necessary to aid in troubleshooting.
- Added the ability to check for updates from the Settings dialogue.
- Changes to Known Good Functionality:
- Removed the Email tab from Settings. Please use Alex Kuretz’s Remote Notification add-in if you desire emailed alerts. Alex’s add-in also supports SMS messaging and more.
- Combined some modules to eliminate a DLL and reduce the application’s overall footprint and memory consumption.
- Disabled (dimmed) the ability to ignore Critical alerts. May enable at a later date, but it seems to defeat the purpose of the add-in.
- Changed several icons on buttons in the main UI.
- SMART data in UI is read directly from the Registry. This results in much faster application loading and display.
- Refresh button triggers an immediate, manual polling of data which updates the Registry data for display.
- "Please Wait" message appears during manual refresh.
- Changed the attribute "type" text that is displayed from "Health" and "Age" to "Pre-Fail" and "Advisory," respectively.
- Changed how the attribute "critical" flag is displayed. Previously it was set to Yes for any attribute with a non-zero threshold. This is incorrect per the SMART specification. Correct analysis relies on the attribute’s Flags field.
- Changed how a disk’s health is reported when its Value falls to EQUAL its non-zero threshold. Previously this would set the attribute to Fail; it is now set to Warning (SMART specification states that an attribute fails when the Value is LESS than the threshold).
- Changed the number of bad sectors, end-to-end errors and other super critical attributes necessary to trigger Critical and Degraded states.
- Bug Fixes:
- HSS-14: Can’t view SMART status for any drives. This was caused by improper NULL checking on servers with media card readers, including those attached to printers.
- HSS-15: Warnings stay even though un-checked.
- HSS-16: Some disks no longer show SMART data (they did in previous production build).
- HSS-17: WHS Console Crash when refreshing. This could happen when certain Resets are performed in the Settings. In-use objects are marked for deletion and the user must log out and back in to clear the objects.
- Fixed problem with Silicon Image SiI controllers which don’t expose SMART threshold data via standard COM (P/Invoke); WMI is used to get this data.
- Fixed a NullReferenceException that was thrown when populating the Select a Disk to View field. This is caused by some disks not exposing a string in the Win32_DiskDrive field.
- Fixed "not supported" error some users were still encountering.