Microsoft is Testing New Storage and Phone Features in Windows 10

A new Windows 10 Insider Preview build offers our first peek at new storage health monitoring and Your Phone features.

“Today we’re releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20226 to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel,” the latest Windows Insider blog post notes. “Storage health monitoring to protect user data … [is] new in build 20226.”

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This new feature is designed to “detect hardware abnormalities in NVMe-based SSDs and notify users [so that they have] enough time to act,” Microsoft says. “It is strongly recommended that users immediately back up their data after receiving a notification.”

It looks like Microsoft is adding a “Drive health” section to the properties page about each storage device in your PC in Settings > System > Storage > Manage disks and volumes > Properties. This section will warn you that “reliability is degraded” and recommend that you back up the data on the drive in case of failure.

Aside from that, build 20226 also provides a new Your Phone feature that will help users manage their linked devices directly in the app, which is a major improvement over what is now an annoyance. From a new settings page in the app called My Devices, you can now link a new device, remove an old device, or switch between active devices. Nice.

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Conversation 7 comments

  • SvenJ

    30 September, 2020 - 2:31 pm

    <p>So they understand a user might have more than one mobile device. Why do they not get a user might have more than one Windows 10 PC? Seems you can only connect a phone to one PC.</p>

    • earlster

      Premium Member
      30 September, 2020 - 3:26 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#580838">In reply to SvenJ:</a></em></blockquote><p>You should try again, it used to be like this, but I currently have my Galaxy S10 attached to both, my Dell work laptop, and my private SP 4.</p><p>To boot, the work laptop is on a VPN, so it is not on my local LAN. Screen sharing doesn't work because of that, but messages and notifications work on both my machines.</p>

      • proftheory

        Premium Member
        30 September, 2020 - 6:38 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#580852">In reply to earlster:</a></em></blockquote><p>If you have Bluetooth enable it might be sharing that way.</p><h5>SvenJ</h5><p> I also have multiple PC's concurrently connected. What I get is a prompt "Is this the computer you want to use" or something like that.</p>

    • jgraebner

      Premium Member
      30 September, 2020 - 4:10 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#580838">In reply to SvenJ:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yep, that definitely works. I have my phone connected both to my Surface Book 2 and my Surface Go 2 and have no problems using them interchangeably.</p>

  • blue77star

    30 September, 2020 - 8:12 pm

    <p>I never saw hardware abnormalities in NVMe-based SSDs, I am sure with this feature there will lot of false positive issues.</p>

  • jumpingjackflash5

    01 October, 2020 - 11:00 am

    <p>Unfortunately, Windows is sinking even deepet …. Let's see where is the bottom …. Sad state of once great consumer OS …..</p>

    • saint4eva

      01 October, 2020 - 2:21 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#581211">In reply to jumpingjackflash5:</a></em></blockquote><p>Over one billion Windows devices is sinking deeper? That's funny. Windows 10 alone is over one billion devices? Lol</p>

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