NecLab Technics

You know by now that I regularly preach the importance of backing up your photos and other important data. Lately I've been using the HP MediaSmart Server, and am going to be involved in a webinar on this device Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 10am PST. You can register at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/hpmediasmart.mspx

In the past I've written about various methods for backup, including DVDs, external hard drives, NAS (network attached storage) and RAID devices. Last fall I added Windows Home Server to the mix, and really liked how it worked and the features it gave me. Since then a few companies have come out with their own devices running Windows Home Server. These units combine Microsoft's software with what is simply a low-powered computer and case containing one or more hard drives. I read about Hewlett-Packard's entry, the HP MediaSmart Server in PC Magazine, and based on a very positive review decided to give it a try.

So far I've been very pleased. Aesthetically it's well-designed and much smaller than you might imagine. It's got space for four internal SATA hard drives (I've got four 500GB in it right now) as well as four USB ports and one eSATA for adding more storage. It has fans (thankfully), but they're very quiet. Located five feet from me in the office, I can just barely hear it running.

Setup was simple. Being a "headless" unit, you don't attach a keyboard or monitor. Instead, you load the HP and Microsoft software onto your Windows machine (in my case a Lenovo T61 running Vista Ultimate) and then control the server from that computer. The software was easy to load and the server showed up right away. Configuration was painless, as I set it to do daily backups of any changes on the T61.

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