By on February 21st, 2009

HP MediaSmart v Drobo

Carl Tyler bought a Drobo and Droboshare last year and told a Microsoft friend that he thought a Drobo combined with a Windows Home Server (WHS) could make a great device, his friend rightly replied that WHS did all that Drobo did and more.

A few days later at home was a HP MediaSmart EX470, I guess said Carl that they want me to write my impressions, which he did.

HP vs Dropo Speed Test

Carl came to the conclusion that the WHS will become more of a device for him both as a mediaserver and for initial backups, and he sees the Drobo becoming the backup device for the WHS.

You can read the full story here.

News • Windows Home Server
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By on February 21st, 2009

Another EX487 Review and Build List

Cheap and Low Power Build List

A couple of articles which caught my eye today, the first being another Windows Home Server build list with the requirement of being low energy and cheap. The build list is here.

The second article is blogger Tim Heuer’s review of the EX487 Home Server from HP.

HP EX487 Front

You can read it here.

News • Windows Home Server
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By on February 20th, 2009

HP Upline Online Backup Within WHS

The Home Server Show website has a great post on how to run HP Upline from inside the Windows Home Server console.

uplinewholescreen3

HP Upline allows unlimited secure online backup. It’s not designed to run in Windows Home Server, but following this tutorial will allow you to do so.

You can read it here.

Tutorial • Windows Home Server
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By on February 19th, 2009

Home Server Meet – Connecticut in the US

A session on Home Server will be held at DACS, which is several local computer organizations on March 2nd 2009 in Connecticut in the US.

Presented by Jay Ferron, who is a CIO for Interactive Security Training, LLC the free event is taking place at the Danbury Hospital auditorium in Danbury, CT.

Activities begin at 6:30 p.m. with registration and casual networking. The meeting starts at 7:00 p.m. with a question and answer period (Ask DACS), followed by announcements and a short break. The main evening presentation begins approximately 8:00 p.m. The meeting is scheduled to adjourn at 9:30 p.m.

More information is available from here.

News • Windows Home Server
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By on February 18th, 2009

Upload Pics to Flickr Using the HP EX48x

Using Flickr EX48x

MediaSmarthome.com has a tutorial on how to upload your pics to Flickr using the HP Photo Publisher on the EX48x range of MediaSmart Server’s. The guide only takes 5 – 10 minutes to complete and for those with an existing  EX47x model the article recommends using the PhotoSync Beta2 for Windows Home Server add-in as an alternative for the Flickr upload feature in HP Photo Publisher.

You can read the guide here.

Tutorial • Windows Home Server
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By on February 18th, 2009

EX485 MediaSmart Server Review

HP MediSsmart Open

Website “Creative Lifestyle Review” has a review of the HP EX485 MediaSmart Server and goes through the various software features and specifications of the new unit form HP.

Read it here.

News • Windows Home Server
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By on February 17th, 2009

CyberPower Windows Home Server 100

The Windows Home Server 100 is another small form factor home-based server, this time from CyberPower Inc. a manufacturer of custom gaming machines and high performance workstations.

CyberPower WHS 100

The unit features a Intel energy-saving ATOM 330 Dual Core CPU (45nm, FSB 533MHz, 1.6GHz, 1 MB L2) on a Intel Mini-ITX mainboard with Gigabit Ethernet, a 500GB SATA-II hard drive, 2GBs of PC2-4200 DDR2-533 memory complete with Windows Home Server. List price of this configuration is $399

The CyberPower Windows Home Server 100 is available direct from CyberPower and can be customized from the company web site with numerous component options. The CyberPower computer system comes with a 3-year limited warranty and free lifetime labor and phone support.

More details are available from here.

Hardware • Windows Home Server
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By on February 17th, 2009

Mac Backup with a EX48x MediaSmart Server

If you would you like to know how to back up an Apple Mac with the new range of HP MediaSmart Server’s, then the Using Windows Home Server site has the details.

HP Software on Macintosh
Author Andrew Edney takes us through the steps necessary to get your Mac backups working with the EX485 or EX487 from HP.

You can read the guide here.

Tutorial • Windows Home Server
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By on February 17th, 2009

Drive Balancing Tool

The AV Science Forums have a post for Windows Home Server users about a new tool that helps with drive balancing.

The utility balances all the data on your drive pool equally, the main purpose being that when a person adds a drive to the pool, it doesn’t necessarily start getting used for a while. While Microsoft has made changes to the usage of the Landing Zone (as in it doesn’t exist anymore), some people’s systems might still be in a non "evened out" state and wish to correct this. On the authors own system, he routinely gets within 2% of perfect balancing on all pooled drives.

NOTE: Usage instructions are available in the following forum post. Make sure you download the latest version, which at the time of publishing is version 1.01 and remember it can take a few hours to balance some systems.

Other Software • Windows Home Server
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By on February 17th, 2009

SharePoint on Windows Home Server Update

Tom Ziegmann has updated his guide and scripts for installing SharePoint on Windows Home Server. The document is now at revision 2.02 and the scripts at 1.1 and include the following changes:

  • Scripts have been updated to correct a typo in the filename location of the Search Database and Log files
  • Guide has been linked to the blog post detailing how to modify the database scripts if the server name is something other than “SERVER”
  • Link has been corrected for download of SharePoint Database scripts.

The guide and scripts can be downloaded from the following location.

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