Looks like the main developer is moving on, though maintaining some form of presence on the forums. Drive Bender (plus PoolHD and Cloud Xtender) will continue to be available and it looks like Drive Bender will be available for a US$5 donation. Not sure about long term support though, I get the feeling it will be best endeavours from here on out.

 

I'm a happy Drive Bender user and have had it running on my HTPC for some time, the current iteration is stable and I've removed/added drives with no problems including one flagged as failing.

I guess these days users would turn to Storage Spaces first so not sure what the differences would be. Me, I'll stay with Drive Bender unless it becomes a problem in the future.