Like many people, we’ve now got more than one PC at home.  The kids have one, there’s a shared machine in the office, and my laptop spends a fair amount of time there too.  And like a lot of home machines, backups aren’t what they could be.  Likewise, we seem to download the digital camera to whichever PC is closest at the time, resulting in a real shambles.  I’ve been meaning to sort it out for a while now.  A simple storage NAS was on the list … so what luck when, just the other day, the gods smiled on me! At the Microsoft Conference, I was lucky enough to win a HP Mediasmart Server running Windows Home Server. 

Like most home-market NAS units, it includes some backup software, and there is a strong focus on the ability to add additional drives to it.  Physically, it resembles other NAS units, with most space reserved for adding disks.  Unlike a PC, there are no screen or keyboard connectors, and it’s not much to look at.  As there is no real need to go near it on a regular basis. I’ve hidden my one away in the basement.

So, the key questions – what does it do, and how well does it do it?

HP have taken Windows Home Server, and added stuff.  Some of the stuff is great, and some is just noise.  In terms of the important stuff, it’s all there.

Setting it up was mercifully easy.  I simply plugged it in, then installed the client software on my home PC, and it was done.  That easy!  The server correctly picked up an IP address and configured itself.  All I had to do was go to the main screen, give it a name, and spend five minutes creating user accounts.  That was it!  The home PCs found it straight away and were able to access the shared drives.  They were able to back themselves up to new server, and, just with a couple of configuration options on the server, all the photos etc from our various home PCs were automatically copied down to the server.  (They still need to be sorted through, but they are at least in one place now)

That’s the key stuff done.  My home PCs are backed up, and they can easily share files.  And, I can log in from elsewhere and access them if I need to.

Noise

But, HP have added a bunch more stuff.  Some of it works better than others.  For example, there is a media streamer function that lets me access my stored photos, music and movies through a webpage.  In theory, I can do this from anywhere.  In practice, it’s clunky.  It works ok from home, but there is not a lot of point to that as the files are all easily accessed normally anyway!  And accessing them remotely is throttled by the internet connection to the point of utter frustration.

On the plus side, the photo publishing works well, pushing selected images to sites like Flickr, and you can even host photos off your own Mediasmart server.  If your firewall supports UNP (plug and play) then the sever will even configure it for you and HP will provide you with a domain name.

7 months of McAfee subscription is included in the bundle, giving much needed assurance of protection, and that’s a great inclusion.  But there are no other options, so if McAfee isn’t your preference, then you’re stuck.

There are options for Mac connectivity, and even an iTunes server.  But no obvious access for Windows Mobile other than browser based.  So if you want to back up your Windows PDA, stick to myphone.microsoft.com.

I really like the PC backup options.  They are simple, scheduled backups that are easy to follow.  But, to back up the Mediasmart Server, it must use the Amazon S3 service.  No alternative options are obvious.  So if you don’t want to use a US datacenter, then you’re stuck. If, as I do, you want to back up to a local vendor, then you hit a brick wall. 

Summary

The Mediasmart Server is a good alternative to a simple NAS for home storage.  The basics are smooth and simple.  The pricing is competitive and it does the job.  There are a number of ‘value-add’ utilities that vary in usability.  Depending on how enthusiastic you are, you can either use these, or not.  And if you had time, you could probably change them.

For a home product, compared to a NAS, it’s a good solution.  A real enthusiast might prefer to build their home server themselves on a dedicated PC, and if they favour Windows over Linux, then Microsoft Home Server plus their choice of add-ons is a great solution.

For me, it does what I need, and what most people need in their home network. I’m happy!