Sun, Oct 28, 2007 | Terry Walsh
Along with releasing a new mini-site featuring the HP MediaSmart Server, Hewlitt Packard this week also issued an updated data sheet for the EX470 and EX475 models. You can download it from HP’s website.
I’m chatting with the guys from HP’s US and UK businesses on Tuesday, so expect to hear more on the MediaSmart server in the coming weeks.
Download: hp.com
Terry Walsh - who has written 661 posts on We Got Served.
Hi - I'm Terry and I'm the Owner of We Got Served. The site's been covering everything to do with Windows Home Server since February 2007.
I live in Silverstone, UK with my wife and when I'm not working on We Got Served, I have a career as an Innovation Consultant to contend with.
October 28th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Can’t wait for more news and to actually get hold of one!
The pdf states that the total storage the unit can handle is 4Tb. Is this a limit of the hardware design or the WHS filesystem?
October 28th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
It’s certainly not WHS, there are some people running systems well in excess of that.
I would guess they are working on fitting4 x 1TB disks internally. There would be nothing stopping you adding external storage.
Colin
October 29th, 2007 at 1:05 am
I was at a Small Business Server User Group meeting last month. We got a demo of WHS and got to see a demo HP unit (no drives). Looks great and I cannot wait to get. I liked the compact form factor.
October 29th, 2007 at 7:43 am
I can’t wait getting my hands on this server. I am also concerned by the maximum storage explained on the datasheet, it’s like with the Medion server, they are always talking about 500GB hard drives. Is there a limit on the size of the hard drive these servers can regognize ? I know it’s not due to WHS because I already tested it with 6TB, can it be a BIOS/hardware limitation then ?
Putting 4 500GB drives may seem enormous but if you plan to replicate the directories then you only get 1TB.
I hope one day I can get a ‘real’ answer from HP.
October 29th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Dose anyone know whether the memory on this server is expandable or not? It is not clear to me from the data sheet. 512M seems a bit less for all the add-ins out there. Right?
October 30th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
I saw this product demonstrated at the Digital Life show recently. There is no limit on the size of the drives it can use. They told me you could have as many as 9 drives using the 4 internal plus 5 external (4USB, 1ESATA), so 9TB using 1TB drives…
October 31st, 2007 at 5:36 am
Dont forget, you can daisy chain ESATA. So theoritcally there is no limit.
October 31st, 2007 at 7:04 am
Jason, thanks for this information, that’s a great news (for me at least
)
November 5th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
I don’t see an optical drive in the HP server - does anyone know how someone would go about re-installing WHS in the event that it is needed?
Thanks.
November 5th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
How do the hard drives work. Raid, independent, etc. So is the data split on the one TB unit amoung the drives or what? Trying to determine if I added a 1 TB drive to the 500 GB model then I have a true 1.5 TB? THanks.
November 6th, 2007 at 4:38 am
Hi Sam
You place the server in a recovery state via a button at the rear of ther server, and the server is restored from a restore partition. In the event of a hard drive failure, I believe a server recovery disk can be used to reinstall the server software. I’m checking on whether this disk can be access via an external DVD drive or what the procedure is.
Terry
November 6th, 2007 at 4:42 am
Tony,
WHS does not use RAID - the Drive Extender system employed on WHS is (allegedly) more advanced than RAID. You can choose to dedicate the whole of your storage to your files (hence adding the 1Tb will equal roughly 1.5Tb), or if you choose to switch on WHS’ built in Folder Duplication function, your shared folders are duplicated across the drives, so storage is reduced accordingly. This is all done within the WHS console, and you can switch between folder duplication on and off really easily, or choose to just duplicate important folders and leave others not duplicated.
Terry
November 11th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
The hardware is pretty simple. What’s missing from the announcement and data sheet is a clear list of the software and communications requirements. Which versions of XP and Vista are supported as consoles? Which IP ports are used for web access. A nice addition would be which ISPs block the ports that Microsoft is using.
In other words - the usual marketing pablum will not cut it for this product.