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Imserba Webstore - HP EX487 MediaSmart Home Server
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List Price: $885.00
Our Price: $488.88
Your Save: $ 396.12 ( 45% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Hewlett Packard
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Personal Computers
Brand: Hewlett-Packard
Color: Black
EAN: 0884420143529
Feature: Intel Celeron 2.0GHz 64-bit Processor
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Hewlett Packard
Manufacturer: Hewlett Packard
Model: EX487
Modem Description: None
Publisher: Hewlett Packard
Studio: Hewlett Packard
Warranty: 1 year warranty
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Features
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Intel Celeron 2.0GHz 64-bit Processor
Network-Based Backup of Macs Using Apple's Time Machine
Single SATA 7200 RPM 750GB Drives (x2)
Photo/Video Sharing and Remote Access to Digital Media and Files on a Variety of Devices
Automatic Digital Content Organization Across All PCs
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Editorial Reviews:
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The HP MediaSmart Server is a home server that can automatically backup and protect your digital memories, centralize your media and content for sharing with friends and family, and enable you to enjoy your digital media while at home or away.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: works fairly well in a mac/pc environment
Comment: There has been lot of info from other good reviews so wanted to provide some info that I didn't see.
I have a 8TB system (4 x 2TB) with no modifications and almost no add-ons.
1) first backup on a Mac with ~1TB of data over ethernet took about 18 hours! Initial backups via ethernet only seems like a good idea.
2) noise isn't too bad even in the living room.
3) remote access via Windows Live works fine and is NOT a trial version. Works great.
4) unit is a LOT smaller than I expected.
5) nice feature to be able to turn down the LED's to different levels.
6) replacing the system default drive with the 2TB HDD was very easy. High recommended to do it before starting backups.
7) share folders work well for Macs and PC's.
8) the sleep and wakeup features works well.
The only real negative I have is that there isn't enough help documentation about the right strategies on going about using this system. I got two different books and still trying to understand how to use it as the help files are very rudimentary.
The other caveat is that for a Mac, the TOTAL backup size for ALL your Macs is limited to ONE hard drive size - for my system, it's limited to 2TB. This isn't an issue for me as my Macs total about 1.3TB of data, but can be limiting moving forward. I understand that the newer Mediasmart servers running the newer software (3.0) may resolve this sometime this fall.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Vista seems to spoil everything
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: HP EX485 HOME SERVER
Comment: THE EX485 IS GREAT FOR BACKING UP FILES AND MULTIPLE COMPUTERS MANUALLY OR AUTOMATICALLY. SET UP IS EASY IF YOU FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY. IT LEADS YOU THROUGH CREATING A STATIC IP ADDRESS/DOMAIN NAME WHICH IS WHAT ALLOWS YOU TO BE ABLE TO ACCESS STREAMING MEDIA, MUSIC, OR FILES OVER THE INTERNET THROUGH THE CUSTOM BROWSER. YOU GET PRACTICALLY EVERTHING THAT YOU WOULD GET IN A PURE SERVER ENVIRONMENT EXCEPT FOR THE ABILITY TO LOAD/LAUNCH APPLICATION SOFTWARE THROUGH THE SERVER. UNLIKE ITS PREDCESSOR, THE EX485 WORKS WITH THE IPHONE; SO THAT YOU CAN STREAM MEDIA TO TO THE IPHONE; PLUS YOU CAN DOWNLOAD A FREE "MEDIASMART" APP FROM THE ITUNES STORE SPECIFICALLY FOR YOUR HP HOME SERVER. HP EX485 MediaSmart Home Server
Customer Rating:
Summary: HP E485, perfect so far...
Comment: I purchased this about a month ago, works perfect so far. It came with one 750gb drive. I have added two 1TB drives and one 2TB drive, all Western Digital drives, all four bays are filled now. The drives were easy to add, unboxed them, opened drive bays, inserted them and they were recognized & formatted within two minutes, very slick!
I have not used any of the advanced features yet such as media streaming or remote access. Will get to those soon hopefully. There are so many features and add-ons to this machine, just need the time to set them up. I have it backing up one Windows XP desktop system on my network so far. Working great, need to setup my other two desktops and one laptop.
Highly recommend this unit and all the features & possibilities it offers.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mac Users Beware
Comment: Mac Users need to be aware of several 'gotchas' in the fine print that aren't mentioned anywhere.
1) The Time Machine support is limited to the size of the hard drives in the server. So if you only have 900GB of space in one big block, that's the biggest you can make it. Not very helpful if you have more on your Mac. While not everyone will experience this the fact that this is no where documented and you have to find it by surprise is why I am knocking them for this.
2) The automated features such as Music Syncing, etc, are not supported as of 9/28/09. There is supposedly a new feature coming to add this but again not mentioned unless you read the fine print. Again, not a huge deal but for something that won 'MacWorld Product of the Year 2009' this is extremely disappointing.
3)r you can't do a bare metal restore as of 9/28/09. Supposedly a software update is coming to address this but you can still restore your data, you just have to instal OS X again and then use the migrate function from a time machine backup. The documentation fails to mention this and I only learned of this when I found a few helpful websites. Another ding.
4) THe Windows Backup client brings the workstation to its knees. So if you have a laptop or other not always on device you can get surprised by the backup starting and your computer is useless. These were a Core 2 duo 2.0GHz desktop and a core 2 duo 1.8GHz laptop and both basically 'froze' until the backup was done. Screen wouldn't redraw, nothing. This isn't necessarily the fault with this one device but is a problem with the software it uses. It's a workaround, but again, very poorly written software. The Time Machine client does not do this so it's a WHS client issue or WIndows XP issue. I didn't try with Vista or Windows 7 they may have fixed that there.
The rest of the Windows features work as advertised. The server is almost silent so if you are putting it in a room you use you will not notice it's there. Very small server & the SATA bays are very easy to put drives in and install.
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