Wise Rhetoric

The reason I purchased this expensive server was just for storage and media stream, that is why it’s media server. Set up was painless and quick. And it fits perfectly on my desk. It works with all OS but with a catch.

First off, to set this to work with Mac OSX, you need to first set it up on a windows os computer. Once that is done install the mac portion and just follow the instructions. It automatically configures itself with iTunes but if you want all your macs and pcs to see your music then you should consolidate your music on the server. That way when you purchase songs from iTunes, the song automatically transfer to your server updating your library for all macs and pcs to use.

The back up service for mac is terrible. Although it works and backs up your mac with time machine, its pointless since you cannot restore your mac from the server, there is no option for it. So I still keep my portable external hard drive with me as a precaution.

The hp server app for iPhone works but only on wifi which is fine since most of my media is large and needs a high speed connection.

The domain you create to access your media through the net is great but better be careful what you share since anyone can access it as long as their within your network range.

Xbox and PS3 automatically recognizes and accesses the server and can play most of the files ( I would stick with .mp4 since it saves me a headache).

The conversion feature is a hit or miss. There are some files I have that cannot be converted for some reason even though its supported and the files used are very picky. I found a way to add more support but it did not work so well and I still get failure messages on most of my files.

You can customize back up times and stand by times to your preference and you can set up where you want the server to search for music, videos or whatever you want.

I have yet to add any more hard drives so not sure how easy that is but from the sounds of other reviews, it seems pretty easy.

Now the thing I love about this server is because all of my computers (running different os) can recognize and connect to it. I do this by remote connection, VPN, and ssh, and smb. With desktop remote connection for mac you can remotely connect to the server as well as from windwos. For linux you just have to either ssh or smb.

To do this though you have to properly configure your router and server. I would suggest you give the server a static ip as that makes the port forwarding much easier and stable.

Last few things are , the server does not add more cable mess (comes with a power cord and ethernet cable), it does not over heat, and its very silent.

Like more and more homes these days, we found ourselves with 3-4 computers (laptops & desktops) each with various photos, music, and personal files. Everything was scattered, duplicated, and very loosely backed up. Now the problem is that in our house we have a mix of PCs running Windows XP, Vista, and a couple of Macs. With 4 kids, this problem was only going to get worse. Add to this a home theater PC and our house was a digital disaster.

A few weeks ago, I took an old PC I had lying around running as a Linux server and installed Windows Home Server. After just 48 hours of using it I was amazed at what it could do to reign in our digital mess. After one night of running it it had backed up all our PCs and centralized our photos and music. Amazing! more amazingly is that it did this all transparently to users, centrally controlled from my desktop. Windows home server has got to be one of Microsoft’s best products in a long time.

A few things I quickly realized about my DIY rig was: 1.) It generated a lot of heat, 2.) it used a lot of power, 3.) the total storage I could get out of it was going to be limiting unless I relied on USB attached drives (SLOW). That’s what drove me to find the HP MediaSmart EX485. This was exactly what I needed, and on top of it, included Mac support for Time Machine backups. The 4 drive bays were what I needed to end my storage growth concerns, and it uses less than half the power my DIY box was using. So I ordered it.

Two days later I got it. Literally 20 mins after unboxing it I had it up and running. 35 minutes after unboxing it was fully operational and had self-updated. Within an hour of starting my setup I had all my PCs and my Mac connecting to it.

I thought Windows Home Server was great, but to see what HP has added on top of the base WHS is amazing. All the extras they have added make this thing more than a bargain. This is one amazing little box. It’s amazing because it can be really simple for the non-techie, but I work in IT, and this thing has more than enough techie features to keep the biggest geeks happy.

If you live a very digital life, have data you cherish, want to simplify your backups and storage, but want to do so with the least amount of hassle without sacrificing flexibility, do yourself a favor and get one of these immediately.

I’ve had the home server for about a month. It was extremely easy to setup, in my opinion. I think I might have done one thing differently during setup and that would be to skip updating the software via Windows Update until after all of my PC’s were working.

Here’s the reason why. My main PC is my XP Media Center 2005. It is a desktop and records all of my TV shows, etc. I set this PC up with the software that comes with the server right away. Did all the updates before using it. No hitches, no errors. Went smoothly and got my first backup that night.

The server was fairly easy to work with. I am a computer guy and don’t consider myself a typical user but there didn’t seem to be anything that technical about the setup and use. Advanced features such as remote desktop worked easily and right away.

The problem occurred when I went to backup my wife’s Vista Premium laptop a couple days after setting up the desktop. I installed the laptop from the CD and updated it with Windows Update. No matter what I have done since, including turning off the firewall, reinstalling the connector and anything that could be related to Home Server, did nothing to fix the issue. I contacted support and got frustrated that they told me to do all of the things that I already have done. I have a XP Home machine and it is working fine. I’ve got all the functionality I wanted out of it in regards to my XP machines but little in regards to the Vista machine.

I haven’t given up on getting the Vista laptop to work but I haven’t had that much time and I’m irritated. It feels like a MS error, either with Vista or with WHS but either way I wonder whether or not it would have worked before I did updates to the WHS while I was setting it up.

I have been shopping for a Home Server type product for a while, I considered the Linksys product and Drobo, but ultimately I decided on the HP Media Smart Server. There have been so many positive reviews, on this site, by press and reviewers that I decided this was the way to go. I don’t think any other product has been so widely and positively reviewed, I have not been disappointed.

HP seems to have really invested significant effort to add real value on top of the already pretty good Windows Home Sever Platform. I bought this box primarily for Backup and video streaming to my X-Box, but HP’s remote video and music streaming to my iPhone and being able to access and play all my music on a really nice web interface from home, at work and when I’m traveling have really exceeded my expectations. I’m not sure if people realize that most of these features are HP exclusives. My previous experience indicates some of these product s are more like Beta experiments, HP has really put some time into making this product work out of the box. I also have read that HP’s customer support is great, So far no need since this server has been running 24 by 7 for 6 weeks on two PC’s and a MAC, no issues. It’s pretty obvious I’m a happy customer, I don’t normally right this type of article, but this has been about the best tech purchase I have made in a long time, nice work HP!

MAC Support: I also like the MAC support, not sure why others NAS type product’s don’t offer Time Machine backup Support for MAC. HP did a nice job making this easy to set up use, also makes file sharing between my PC’s and MAC laptop a breeze. When I pull my iPhone out and play DVD’s or my music collection, streaming from my home, that’s pretty cool too.

DVD Support; HP treats unprotected DVD’s as if they were video’s, transcodes them into MP4 files for easy streaming to my X-box and iPhone. Some video programs have more features, but I didn’t even know HP had this feature, works in the background and converts my video, pretty cool.

Media Collector: HP searches the PC’s in your house and moves all Photo’s, Music and Video to the Server so it can be streamed and accessed remotely automatically. Works well.

There are a few more features I have not gotten to, like Photo publishing and on-line Photo album, hopefully these are useful also. Looking forward to what HP adds next.

If I had one concern it would be cost, I wish I could have gotten something this reliably and easy to use for less than $499, after a lot of reading, and now 6 weeks of use, I’m convinced this was the right choice.

Happy Customer.

The HP EX48X MediaSmart Home Server series is a worthwhile version 2 release that retains it’s familiar mini-tower design.

NOTE: The ONLY difference between an EX485 and an EX487 is whether you want 1×750GB (EX485) or 2×750GB (EX487). The additional bump of $150.00 for another 750GB does not make sense when you can spend the same amount immediately for a 1.5TB capacity as of this writing. So order an EX485 and buy your own chosen hard drive brand to install.

THE GOOD:

- 4 internal drive bays that allow installation of SATA I/II hard drive with potentially unlimited size even up to 2TB per disk or more per forum chatter.
- Additional 1 eSATA port and 4 USB ports to attach external hard drives to expand storage space when all four internal bays have been filled and/or for removable off-site storage and backup.
- 1 Gigabit ethernet port that MUST be connected to a router. You cannot connect this directly to an Ethernet port of your PC.
- Relatively easy to remove and install hard drives. No tools required.
- Supplied Ethernet cable to get you up and running without additional materials.
- Remote connection and streaming via setting up your own personal website.

THE BAD:

- You MUST have a Windows PC to set up and control the server from assigning a server password and user accounts, adding and removing hard drives, managing backups, and checking health of the unit and network.
- Initial 750GB space is not sufficient especially for it’s current price offering.
- HP MediaSmart and Windows Home Server software is clunky even with update 2.5. There is a bit of a lag when clicking within the software menu.
- Some adjustments require restarts for changes to take effect which means the need for server downtime.
- LIMITED MAC OS X capability.
- Time Machine integration requires software installation versus simply having the ability for one hard drive bay to be allocated for it and prevent problems especially when restoring.

EXPERIENCE:

Despite the cons, I’m still rating this with high marks. The design and concept of having a very compact Home Server that is expandable makes it a winner. There is sufficient processing power to handle the home server needs.

CONNECTING TO A ROUTER:

Works best if you have a respectable Wireless-N router with Gigabit Ethernet connection and Universal Plug and Play support. Out of curiousity I’ve tried a basic Linksys WRT320N and installation and settings were automatically tweaked between the MediaSmart server and router to allow REMOTE connections.

As a primary Mac user, I actually use an Apple AirPort Extreme Dual Band router and I had to manually tweak the settings myself to open up a few Private and Public TCP ports as well as assign a static DHCP address for the MediaSmart server to acquire each and every time it powers up and connects to the router.

OVERALL:

The only solid miss is their lack of full integration with a Mac OS. I’m hoping their next software release will focus on a snappier performance with minimal lag.

But once settings has been adjusted via a Windows PC, you can practically forget about it and let it do it’s task as a server running 24×7 or have the ability to sleep and save power at specific hours of the day when no one is home.

Unlike other servers, this allows any brand of hard drive without having to lock you out and patronize their own. If you are in the market for a home server, you’ve come to the right brand.

I was looking for an affordable server solution that would be easy to setup and use, would centralize all the media files scattered across our home network, and would have massive amounts of storage to centrally backup all our PCs, which constantly outgrow local external backup drives attached to them. With the rave reviews in this thread, the EX485 seemed like a safe bet.

Unfortunately, on one essential count, the server did not deliver: It failed to restore an image of my desktop PC to that machine after I had upgraded its hard drives (i. e., reinstall the PC 1:1 as it had been). I started the desktop from the recovery CD provided with the MediaSmart server and picked the backup to be restored. The software went through the restore for several hours, until at the very end, it broke off and delivered an error message: “Unable to refresh RestoreWizard from your server, your server may be an older version of Windows Home Server than this CD or your server may be damaged, we will attempt a restore with an older version.”

This second run and several attempts after with different settings failed as well. Calls to HP’s support (impeccably friendly, patient and helpful) failed to come up with a solution as well. So did (so far) inquiries on Microsoft’s home media server board, in HP’s forums and on “We got served”. A quick Web search showed that this error seems to be very rare.

Still, it has happened to me, so the bottom line is, I have a backup server that does not restore. I now have to restore the PC manually, which of course will take the better part of a day.

Other than that, the product is easily the best there is out there. It is not as easy to set up and use as you might think, but it is a whole lot better than, e.g., Netgear’s ReadyNAS Duo, which is what I had used previously. Nevertheless, this is not a consumer product, and you will need a modicum of PC and network literacy to use it.

When I set up the server — which must be done from a PC, it doesn’t work from a Mac — it seemed to get stuck at 16%. Turned out the server downloaded updates from the Internet, but since it does not tell you that, and since it does not show you any indication of progress, it may easily seem that the installation hung itself up. Eventually, it continued.

Setting up media collecting from the network PCs was very easy, but after I was done, I noticed the server did not copy and media files from the existing PCs in the network. I had to call HP support to find out that both the server software and the client on the desktop need to be the same version, which was not the case for me. The software does not check automatically whether the versions are the same. After I had updated the desktop client, everything went fine.

The initial media collection, i.e., copying music, pictures and videos from the network PCs onto the server took a long time (almost a day). I assume this was because I kept working on the desktop from which most of the media files had to be copied, and the server software throttled the download speed to not slow down the apps I worked with. (This is actually a good thing, I had other background solutions for backups e.g. that slowed down the desktop so severely I had to uninstall them.) The copy was only partly completed when I went to bed, but the next morning it was done.

Once you are done with that initial copy, you also need to manually activate media sharing, which is in a different part of the console. There is no automatic prompt to do so.

Setting up backups was even simpler than the media sharing. Add the PC from a menu, “OK” the default settings, and you are good to go. Activating remote access was also straightforward.

One con is that the server comes with a trial version for McAffee anti-virus, and every client that runs the the server client software comes up with a reminder prompt to activate McAffee every time you startup that PC. Annoying bloatware. There is a note on how to get rid of it in one of the other reviews.

Adding more hard drive storage (I added 3 Terabyte) was as easy as opening the server door, opening the drive bay, sliding in the drive, closing bay and door, and adding the storage to the server’s storage space in the server console.

All in all, media sharing works great, but on my desktop, restores work only for single files, but not for images (= 1:1 copies) of the desktop.

Bottom line: If the backup works for you, which it most likely will, this is a great product. It looks really, really cool, too, and is so quiet you can put it into your living room if you want to. Purchase the EX485 instead of the EX487, which is $100 more expensive but only adds storage that you can easily add yourself, and cheaper.

This is the product that I have needed at home for a long time. Not every house is set up like mine, so this might not do as much for you. I have 3 primary computers set up. When you use more than one computer, organization becomes somewhat of a nightmare. Get a MediaSmart Home Server. I had music, photos and documents on every computer. I hated sitting down at one and then realizing what I wanted to listen to while I worked was on a different computer. I had shared folders across my network, which works, but this is better.

One harddrive to rule them all.

Organization and data backup are probably the two main selling points for a home server. But another great feature is being able to stream your data from remote locations. This means you can sit at a friend’s house and pull up the contents of your server to show off the pictures from your vacation. Or sit at work and listen to your cds from home (this may encounter problems from your company’s firewall and IT policy). This is a great perk, but this is where that advanced knowledge comes into play. Depending on who your broadband service provider is, you may run into issues with which ports you can forward on your router to allow remote access to your server.

The documentation that comes with this server says, unfortunately, that it is not compatible as a print server. This would be great if it were. I’d love to be able to sit on my couch with my laptop and send print jobs across the network. (Allegedly there is a way to run your home server as a print server, but I haven’t attempted it yet.)

If you’re an iTunes user, there is another neat feature. You can access your server in iTunes from every computer on your network. There are a few minor inconveniences with this, but overall it is a nice feature if you use iTunes. You cannot edit id3 info on the songs when they’re displayed on the server like you can when the songs are stored locally on your machine. You cannot drag and drop songs onto your iPod from the server like you can when the songs are stored locally on your machine. You can get around this second issue by mapping a network drive to your music folder like a shared folder and browsing to it in Windows.

I’m really happy with this product. It works right out of the box and comes with a ton of storage. And if you need it, you can easily expand capacity. There are a few things that were inconvenient about it, as listed above, but the good outweighs the bad by a lot.

As I was upgrading from an extremely slow and non-expandable NAS, I had high hopes for the HP MediaSmart ex485, and once I got past the setup issues, the server has performed very well.

PROS
- Backups of my four Windows PCs went very smoothly. Some people have expressed concern about the speed – it really depends on how much data you have on your computer. You have the ability to exclude folders from the image-based backup, so you don’t have to waste time copying over music or videos that you already aggregated on the MediaSmart. Initial backup of a PC with a clean install of Windows took about 15 minutes over a gigabit Ethernet connection and 25 minutes over a 802.11n connection, and subsequent backups took just a few minutes, even over wireless.
- The hardware is very well designed, and is more than adequate for running WHS. This may seem like a minor point, but I have had a lot of hardware that seemed barely able to run the software loaded on it.
- For advanced users, the server is highly customizable: I was able to set up a print server, enable remote printing, set up uTorrent to download files to the server, set up FTP, and set up an internet proxy. For less experienced users, there are still quite a few plug-ins for WHS that are very easy to install through the WHS console.
- The remote access webpage is nice. HP gives you 1 free year of domain service so you can access your files from the internet.
- For those of you planning to use the MediaSmart with a Media Center PC, I have had no problems with streaming 1080p HD video to my HTPC through 802.11n. In fact, I’ve been able to stream two 720p videos over wireless N to different computers with no stuttering or lag (as long as you don’t start playback at the same time). I haven’t tried 2 1080p streams though.
- I decided to swap the stock 750GB system drive out for a 1TB drive before I set anything else up; the WHS restore itself took about 30 minutes and went pretty smoothly. However, there were other setup problems (see below).

CONS
- Setup was definitely a bit of a pain. First, the client software installation disk found my server but couldn’t download the WHS connector software. Googling showed that this was a known problem where, when paired with certain routers, the setup wizard would ignore the server sitting on the local network and look for other servers connected to the Internet, which of course would result in an error. Solution: assign a static local IP address to the server in your router and then edit the HOSTS file in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc to reflect the assignment.
- Beware: choose the names of your server and your client PC’s carefully. I guess Microsoft and HP felt like this wouldn’t be much of a problem for most people, but I changed the name of my server and immediately “broke” my WHS connector software installations. When I uninstalled and reinstalled, the setup wizard told me that the server needed to be updated before I could install, even though I knew it was already up to date. Solution: change the HOSTS file to reflect the name change and go through the registry replacing each instance of the old server name with the new server name. I also had to change the name of one of my PCs – after I had backed it up on the server. The home server itself actually had no problem recognizing the name change and I didn’t lose my backup, but once again, I had to go through the registry fixing all the naming issues before I could do any more backups.
- TwonkyMedia doesn’t play nice with my video collection, which is predominantly mp4. When I include the folder in TwonkyMedia, the plugin promptly crashes. To me this isn’t a big deal since I only intended to stream music anyway, but to some it may be a no-no.
- I don’t use the iTunes server or the Media Collector software, but for some reason HP still connects to my PCs every day to look for new media (that it never collects). It doesn’t impact performance, but it’s annoying.
- The folder structure of the server can’t be altered, at least not easily. WHS forces certain folders upon you (Music, Photos, Videos, Converted Videos, Software, Recorded TV, Public, Printers and Faxes). You can add your own folders, but for someone like me who has a different folder structure in mind, this can be an annoyance as well.
- WHS allows remote access to the WHS admin console as well as client PCs, but there are a few catches. First, you have to use Internet Explorer to log into the server. Also, remote access to client PCs only works with Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista Business/Enterprise/Ultimate. Even then, you have to fiddle with a bunch of settings on each computer for this to work. I chose to completely ignore this feature and go with LogMeIn Free, which works on all platforms. Another free alternative is Windows Live Mesh.
- If you have the server automatically configure port forwarding for remote access, on occasion something will go wrong and the remote access page won’t be accessible. I solved this by manually forwarding ports 80, 443, and 4125 from my router to the server.

OTHER
- Some people have complained that no good server should require clients to install a piece of software on their own computer. This is NOT necessary; you can still access the files on the server through Windows Explorer without installing any extra software. The client software is primarily for facilitating administration of the server and for performing backups. If you are an advanced user, you can remotely connect to the server with the RDP software in Windows and not install the connector software at all.
- People debate whether or not anti-virus is necessary; since there are so many ports on my server open to the Internet, I opted to install avast! WHS antivirus, which works very well. It isn’t free like the home versions, but I think it’s worth the peace of mind.

I do like this and so far it has been easy to use, there are still a few configurations I want to do and I may need assistance for some of them, but for basic setup it is easy and intuitive.

I will update this again later but I have it installed and backed my computer up with this, I don’t have a need right now to use the restore feature but from what the other poster said it should work well. The files are shareable across all the PC’s that are installed for the router which makes it nice to organize music and photos. I do need a faster router (the backup took a very long time) but that isn’t anything to take away from this unit.

The install is pretty basic and works well but I did have a problem with the HP setup screen, I couldn’t view the entire window, I had to make my task bar as small as possible and move the setup screen as far as I could to the top of the monitor to finally be able to see the buttons at the bottom to click. (Hey HP ever hear of making resizable screens???) After I got through that it was simple to get it setup for my PC and backups.

I am not sure if I will make it available to the internet so I won’t review that yet (it does state something about a personal web address so that would make it more secure I would think), but I do have multiple computers to backup and this seems to work fine for that.

The enclosed directions are a little bare and I think should contain a little more information. I haven’t found any reference to the USB ports listed but that may be in the electronic instructions.

I did find a contradicting instruction, the one book stated to install the software first and the basic instruction brochure stated to install the unit to your router first so I checked online and you do connect the unit to the power and router before inserting the install disk.

This unit stays very cool and is very quiet when running, you can set the unit to sleep on your PC and it will wake up when it is scheduled to do backups, that makes a nice savings on power usage, it also has an alert that will let you know if the unit is overheating or if one of the fans aren’t working properly.

Inserting additional harddrives is a very simple task that even a non techy like me can do it.

It does include MacAfee anti virus trial which I don’t want, and it is not clear to me if this would conflict with what I have on my PC so I didn’t install it.

It has 2 – 750 GB hard drives which makes for ample storage space with 2 bays open to add more storage, and it is on the small side so it doesn’t take up too much space and was very easy for me to find a place for it to sit.