Accessories

For the price a great buy.
Even if you only use it as a NAS its a great product and the possibilities only expand from there.

Love this little box!
After spending years taking digital pictures and acquiring a deep library of digital music I was becoming more and more concerned with the ad-hoc backup plan I had in place. When I remembered to back my systems up I did, otherwise they woudl go for months.
I know there are tons of options when it comes to backups, many are cheaper than this and some are much more. There are also other options to sharing my pictures on the internet, remote desktop and file sharing. I just didn't find any of them to be as cool. :-) Or as easy to set up.
Amazon got this to me in short order and in good shape. I opened the box, plugged in the network cable to my router and plugged in the power cord. After that I turned it on, installed the client software on my desktop and went through a quick configuration process. Once I had set all my options it took a few minutes to "do it's thing" and reboot. Worked flawlessly.

I am now getting daily incremental and weekly full backups of every computer in my house. The home server automatically manages all the backup files to ensure I don't get overrun with them but also have the one I need. I am also sharing pictures with friends and family without flooding their inboxes and love the ablity to get access to my internal data via file sharing and remote access.

I've also heard about some issues with initial startup and configuration. Mine went flawlessly. Can't guarantee yours will too, but this one did.

Few side notes and "picking the nits":
-Runs very quite. I can barely hear it in the background and can't hear it at all of my desktop is running

-The LED lights on the front are adjustable for brightness - this was a great idea so kudos to whoever thought of that. :-)

-Needs a 1 TB (single drive) option for it's drive config when you purchase. I went with the 500Gb model so I wouldn't waste one of the 4 internal drive bays with another 500Gb.

-Pretty skimpy on built in RAM, should at least be 1Gb. Doesn't seem to impact performance much but the cost is minimal and you could bleed a little bit more out of the system

-eSATA port to connect external drives. Another good idea - you never know when you'll need more TB.

Great server, great software
Disclosure: I was a beta tester on software of this product beginning a year ago, so I have a rather strong bias in favor of it.

Since I build my own computers, I used Microsoft's beta version of Windows Home Server as it moved slowly through various beta versions. I agonized as various bugs appeared, but never did I lose any backups and with each new version WHS became more stable. When the final version was released in late fall 2007, I managed to snag a copy and installed it on an old computer. It ran like a champ.

So why did I opt for the HP version? Quite simply, I wanted a small server (this thing's a lot smaller than it looks) that would use far less energy than my old "warhorse" from days gone by. So what do you need to know that other reviews may not have told you?

1. For optimal performance, you really need to be running a gigabit network. This may be as simple as buying a gigabit switch. You may have a salesman tell you that CAT5e cable won't run gigabit, but that's not true. As long as you don't have huge cable runs, you'll be just fine. If you can't run a gigabit network, you'll have a really long first backup, but after that WHS is smart enough to only backup what's changed, so things will go faster.

2 You can't back up a computer with FAT32 formatting. Surprise! My wife's old computer is still FAT32 and I get a message saying I have to convert the drive to NTFS. Ok, but that means I have to find a way to backup her data before I back it up. Hmmm . . .

3. Now this is cool: I set my computers to run backups between 1:00 and 4:00 AM. Then I put the computers in sleep mode, which effectively shuts them down. During the middle of the night the server wakes up the computers, does the backup, then puts them back to sleep. A lot of energy saved there! You can have up to 10 home computers installed, not likely, but it's there if you want it.

4. Adding storage is ridiculously easy. You just slide out a tray in the HP Server, drop in a drive and slide it back in. No screws or wires. And everything is on the front. Also, the server runs "headless" which means you don't need a keyboard, mouse, or monitor to set it up.

5. I added another 500GB drive (for $109) which gives me 1TB of storage. The HP Server comes with a Seagate 500GB drive installed and a 1TB version is also available. Here's another cool feature. In case you don't want to trust all of your backups to one drive you can set up your HP home server to write your data to two drives, so if one fails, you've got a complete backup on the other drive. Of course this takes more space, but . . .

6. The WHS software only backs up one instance of each file. So if you have the same picture on three computers, it saves space by only writing one instance of the file. Really smart.

7. Remember, WHS is not just for backups, but for sharing files across your network, and potentially across the world. Depending on your ISP, that may be easy or potentially difficult, but that's not really the fault of WHS.

Other goodies: You can check the server temperature, fan RPM's and voltages from any computer on the network -- if there's a problem you'll be alerted on your computer; the front of the server has status lights which change colors according to the health/status of the server, and you can set the brightness of the lights (in case it's in your bedroom). It's quiet, but I have it in the basement and anything would seem quiet next to the multi-fan monster it replaced.

And finally, WHS is based on the business Windows Server 2003, which is rock stable. While the HP EX470 is not going to wind up in every home in America, if you're a computer enthusiast you won't have much trouble justifying this purchase. I've spent a lot more money over the years on backup solutions that were tedious and didn't really put a backed up file within easy reach. With WHS you can restore a single file or the entire drive. I restored my laptop drive when I upgraded to a larger drive and it worked quickly and perfectly.

So stop worrying about your backups. Yes, it's a bit pricey, but you get what you pay for. Microsoft and HP hit a homerun with the HP EX470.

affordable home data backup
I have been waiting for an affordable network backup device to periodically backup the computers in my home network. I ordered the HP Mediasmart Server, which came equipped with one 500GB drive, from Amazon at a very good price. I subsequently purchased three WD Caviar GP 500GB drives from newegg at $104.99 each to fully populate the server. I now have a 2 TB server available to backup my network computers. I've had no problems. Installation of the additional drives was a "snap", and setup of the server was almost "idiot proof". I'm now comfortably backing up for the first time

Fantastic simple networking at an affordable price
Ok let me start by saying i never write reviews for products. I have bought tons of stuff off Amazon, but this one i feel is quite extrodinary. To put things in perspective i had 3 SATA drives (750gig, 1 terrabyte, and the 500 it came with) lying around. With most other NAS systems you need to have matching drives. All 500gig drives...all 250 gigs etc... This system can accomodate ANY size SATA drive you put into it! For me this was a deal breaker because who can seriously afford to buy all those drives at once? I bought this unit because i had spare drives and needed a way to be able to use all of them. To sum it all up, i now have 1.75 TB of storage, and every pc you install the software on automatically backs itself up to the server. Let me put it this way, if you have some SATA drives lying around, and want a small easy to use server with hot swap bays this thing is it. Get the 500 gig model and just add more HD's any size as you need more space. *warning* you need at least 2 drives to take advantage of folder duplication. Folder duplication basically spans the files on other drives in case one fails. On a nice side note, if a drive starts to fail the light will change color on the server! I am in the field of IT and let me just say if you want easy, fast, and affordable storage this is it. If you want to build your own server feel free...but when you run into problems, you'll wish you bought this puppy.

-JB