My review of the HP Mediasmart Server

I have now had my HP Mediasmart Server for a few days now and have had plenty of time to mess around with it, the bottom line is, Im pretty happy with it, after buying a HP laptop about 2 months ago, I swore I would never buy another HP Product, the laptop had the latest and greatest up to date components but the bloat and crapware was unbelievable, the laptop was slow right out of the box, never mind uninstalling the crapware the registry was huge and there was useless HP stuff that stayed in, ok now that was fixed, I have the windows anytime upgrade disks (32 bit and 64 bit, I ordered both and now this HP really flies) Problem solved with special thanks to member orev on this site (to see his stuff go to the HP discussion area.
There are plenty of HP Mediasmart Server reviews out there, (just look them up) but what I think differs here is Im just your regular Joe Smow consumer who bought one and using it in real life.
The setup was a breeze, just follow the instructions, BUT what I did is I turned off all my firewalls, antivirus and I went as far as resetting my router, a D-link DGL-4500, I connected hard wire and my laptop has a Intel 4965AGN wireless card, more on this later, I hooked my laptop up with cat 6 to the router and cat 6 from router to server , Im not going to bore you with the preliminaries, just look it up, what I did is, I down graded my Vista Ultimate 64 to Vista Ultimate 32 because the backup feature will not work in 64 bit (sort of blows the whole idea of backup), you can FORCE INSTALL the CONNECTOR software on Vista 64 but NO BACKUP FEATURES, everything else works just fine, Vista 64 bit connector will be available in February 08, so there.
I have the EX470 model that came with 1 500 gig Seagate drive and I purchased 3 500 gig Seagate barracuda enterprise drives, I went with the enterprise drives solely for the longevity.
When loading the HP Widows Home Server connector software, the package installed HP update software on my laptop, (I was sort of expecting them to load something I didn’t want) ok I can deal with that, now moving into the Windows Home Server console, I noticed a tab for HP stuff, do not fret here because this stuff is actually useful and I wouldn’t consider it crapware, this in mind I think this home server stuff is too new for HP to start adding crapware to it, (thank god, get one early before they wreck it).
Everything is up and running just fine now, it does what it claims and it does it efficiently, the WHS software has its own version of doing things as it is different from a RAID system, to access the Windows Home Server operating systems to have a look around or do some servicing , you must access it through your remote desktop, NOT YOUR CONSOLE, that said, when installing a 3rd party add on, it takes a bit of getting used to, such as I added Diskeeper for Windows Home Server which has to be extracted in Windows Home Server so you can get the .msi file and install it in your user console.
DO NOT USE THE DEFRAG AVAILABLE IN WINDOWS HOME SERVER, MICROSOFT WARNS YOU OF THAT, Diskeeper and Perfect Disk have defragers that have no problems and work just fine, don’t ask me why because I don’t know what the problem is, just don’t use the defrag supplied in Windows Home Server.
Lets get to the hardware, Im trying to keep this short as possible but I can go on all night and I don’t think you want to be reading something almost endless, the box has a 1.8 AMD Semperon with 512megs of ram, you may ask, why only this and I have to agree with HP is that this is a home server intended for home use so power consumption should be kept down, the 512 megs of ram is ok but can be questionable to what a person is intending to do with it, next week Im going to rape and sodimize this server along with its warranty by adding a 2 gig stick of ram to it, by they way a 37 gig backup took 27 min on a wireless laptop with the Intel 4965AGN with the D-link DGL-4500 set at 5Ghz and the HP Server hooked to the DGL-4500 router with cat 6 cable.
My final thoughts to a home server is that if this type of product gets very popular, it could start a new trend and wake up some internet service providers, the ISP’s will have to have a close look at how they do business with their slow upload speeds and bandwidth caps as no longer are they going to be relevant to what they are providing currently, naturally they will be screaming money and bandwidth, but that’s tough, things are changing again, the website provider may want to sell now as the home server can serve up its own website also its theoretically possible to connect to your server with your iPhone or web enhanced phone and listen to your stored music without having it stored on your device if your in the wireless range .

 

Thanks for the review, I am looking at the MediaSmart as a possible replacement for my current NAS (Buffalo Terastation Pro).

Does the server really need to be defragmented? I would hope that fragmentation issues would take care of themselves. I really didn't expect to have to install a third party app to deal with fragmenting. I didn't expect to need to fragment manually at all!

I was also curious if a ram upgrade might help the system perform better, please share your results after the upgrade.

Thanks for the review!

 

An update: I replaced the 512 megs of ram with a 2 gig stick, in the WHS os it is recognized as 1.96 gig but that’s because there is ram used up by the graphic chips and maybe some other things on the motherboard (yes it does have graphic chips, they are SiS Mirage Graphics).
After the memory upgrade the performance has increased astronomically, my transfer rate increased almost x3 not to mention everything run a-lot smoother, I have been doing a-lot of testing which included destroying data to see what happens then after that I would go do a factory reset on the server which consists of formatting all 4 500 gig drives then installing the os and other software , before with 512 megs of ram it would take 45 min to format 4 harddrives then 30 min to install os and other included software, that’s 75 min start to finish, now with 2 gigs of ram the whole process takes 40 min start to finish including the formatting of 4 500 gig drives , now that my HP warranty is shot to hell I’m going to try some other things, the word out on the net is the processer can be upgraded but to what I don’t know and somebody is working on that.
Installing the new ram is fast and easy but its not for the faint hearted as it does take some tinkering, there are sites that tell you how to do it (as I followed) but there are some minor inconveniences the sites don’t tell you, its not a big deal, just be careful, if I had to do it all over again, I would have a rubber band and 2 paperclips handy.
Bottom line the upgraded ram works much better and there will be much more add-in available shortly for the system.
As going for a defragmenter, about 50% of the owners will say you don’t need a 3rd party defragmenter and the other 50% will say you need a defragmenter, so what do you do, I went with a defragmenter, Im using Diskeeper for WHS and I personally think it does a great job.
Upon setup the os puts in a 20 gig partition on your first drive (the bottom drive in your array) and this is where you are going to get most of your fragmentation, and there is quite a bit of it, then there is some other fragmentation on the other drives in your array, but after all the defragging is done , it seems like there is no more or little fragmentation on the other drives, it the os partition that is sceptical to fragmentation and diskeeper keeps it in check, WHS moves files differently then raids do, so things are a little different, WHS sets certain files on the drives and MS calls the Tomb Stones meaning they don’t move (I’m not sure how MS came up with the name Tomb Stones, but I understand by that naming these files this name, they don’t move, I also think drugs and alcohol had something to do at MS when they came up with the name), as far as it goes with fragmentation, all I have to say is its your call on it, at the end it looks like the os gets most of the fragmentation , I went with the 3rd party defrag and I’m happy I did.

 

Wow! Awesome information. Thanks for keeping me updated. To be honest, before the day I read your first post, I had not given Windows Home Server any thought at all. I am in the market for a new NAS (as I said above), and although I am used to a fairly spartan yet effective feature set (see Buffalo Terastation) I have to admit I am impressed with WHS.

After checking out the HP MediaSmart all over the net, I found it is probably the #1 WHS prebuilt box on the market right now. Velocity Micro makes a WHS with more powerful components, although the price is up around 1600 for the configuration I set which included components far less powerful than what I list below.

After that I went over to NewEgg and tried building a freakishly overpowered WHS box myself. Since you are someone actually using the OS, I was wondering if you might comment on my hardware choices.


Case
NZXT ROGUE Crafted Series BLACK
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146043

Drives
4 X Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST3500320NS 500GB 7200 RPM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148294

Power Supply
CORSAIR CMPSU-450VX ATX12V V2.2 450W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139003

RAM
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231098

Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-G33M-DS2R LGA 775 Intel G33 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231098

CPU
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115029

OS
Microsoft Windows Home Server 32 Bit 1 Pack - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116395

Total Price is just about $1500.

I didn't need a VGA card due to the onboard x3100 on the Gigabyte motherboard. Do you think that it would be a good idea to get a PCI-E Gigabit NIC instead of using the onboard motherboard gigabit?

I am hoping that with these components I can remove as many bottlenecks as possible standing in the way of speedy network service.

I have been reading about issues with large file transfers (files >5GB), have you had any trouble with that?

Sorry for the information overflow, and thanks again for the thread.

 

Just remember that you don't need a super powerful machine to run WHS. Admittedly, I am not pushing mine to the limits that I plan to, but right now, I am running on older hardware, and it is running GREAT for me.

I'm running on an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ with 2 MB RAM, mobo with integrated graphics, a PCI SATA card with 2 SATA hard drives connected and a couple of IDE drives installed, as well, that I had laying around. Altogether, I have over 1 TB on the WHS itself, and another 500+ GB in a D-Link DNS-323 that I've been using for about 8 or 9 months.

If you don't have any older hardware, and you're going to buy new stuff, about the only major requirement would be to make sure you get a 64-bit CPU, since future versions of WHS will only support 64-bit processors. Other than that, fast hard drives and a Gigabit NIC card, and you're set.

That said, I AM considering picking up an HP WHS server, or looking into one of the others that are currently available, just out of curiosity.

 

Wow StormEffect, you have specked a power house, you may want to have a look at power consumption if you plan on running 24/7, My little HP server with 4 drives uses 90-99 watts total, after I did some calculations of my HP, if it was to run 24/7 for 365 days, it would cost between $75-$85 for the whole year, I priced some parts out including the WHS os and found it some what hard to compete with the pre-built HP and I took the end results into account such as its assembled and ready to go (notice I never said anything about warranty) although I would rather build my own powerhouse desktop.
One thing I found very interesting about the HP hardware and WHS os is that I have a 3 year old APC ups that still holds a good charge and it came with auto low power shutdown cable that I have never had any intensions of using , the cable has a plug that connect the battery and a usb connector at the other end, I plugged the usb into the server and it was noticed by the os and it works like a charm without having any type of parachute software installed, the battery runs the server, cable modem and router for about 10 min, I set the battery 1st warning for 60% and 2nd at 40% as it pulls the parachute and shuts down properly.
P.S DTrump, let us know what you pick up, so far Im happy and satisfied with my HP as so far I have completely technically abused this thing, the only thing left to do is drop it and shoot it, but I wont go there.

 

I should really be concerned about the power consumption in the long run, but for now I live in a dormitory and power is free. Gosh, I feel sort of bad in the "StormEffect hurts the environment" sort of way.