If you are the proud owner of an earlier model of the HP MediaSmart Server such as the EX470/EX475/EX485/EX487, you’ve probably been reading the reviews and watching with a little bit of envy the new features available to owners of the more recent EX490 and EX495. A while ago, HP promised the community an update to this latest software and they have just recently made the update available. I have had the upgrade disks for a couple of weeks now and have performed the update on both the MediaSmart Server EX475 and EX487, and have put together this guide to help you through the process.
Making the Decision to Upgrade
The first thing you will want to do is decide if the 3.0 upgrade is right for you. A great starting point for an overview of the 3.0 feature set is my in depth review of the EX490 and EX495. One of the more important considerations to make is that once you’ve made the upgrade to 3.0, you really shouldn’t try going back to the older version. HP won’t support you if you want to revert versions, though it should be possible by performing a Factory Reset with your original Server Recovery disk, which erases all the disks in your server.
For owners of the EX470 or EX475 there are a number of changes, almost all of which should be considered positive improvements, with possibly one contentious change being the replacement of the Webshare feature by the new PhotoViewer. The PhotoViewer has a few significant differences in that it does not allow the ability to configure accounts for family or friends, has no email notifications, and doesn’t allow visitors to upload photos to your albums. If you are attached to the behavior of the Photo Webshare than you likely will not want to upgrade.
The 2.5 version of the software on the EX485 and EX487 is much more similar to 3.0, and all the changes can be considered improvements so the decision should be more simple. If you value the improved performance of the Media Collector and Video Converter, the advanced Mac backup solution, plus the redesigned user interface, then this update will likely appeal to you.
The LED behavior in the EX470 and EX475 will change to match that of the newer servers. The most noticeable impact is the loss of the “purple” LED mode that indicates when the system is ready to initially be setup, and also indicates when a drive is ready to be added to the storage pool. This behavior is replaced with the “breathing” LEDs that gradually dim and brighten in a cyclical fashion.
Finally, your hardware may impact your decision to upgrade or not. The original EX470 and EX475 only included 512MB of RAM which really is insufficient to effectively run the 3.0 software with many of the features enabled. HP recommends a minimum of 1GB of RAM, and 2GB is ideal for the best performance especially if you run many Add-Ins. The stock EX485 and EX487 handle the upgrade fine out of the box, but you really will want to upgrade the memory in your EX470 or EX475 if you have not yet done so. You can find some great deals on memory in the Newegg, Amazon, or Buy.com links here in the forums.
Getting the Update Disks
If you’re still reading and have decided to perform the update, the next step is to head over to HP.com, enter your product model number in the “Support and Drivers” section. Then follow the path for your MediaSmart Server model number to order the upgrades. The upgrade costs US$25 or €25 and a pack of CDs and DVDs will be shipped to you.
While you are waiting for the upgrade disks to arrive, I suggest you review the upgrade process outlined in the following guides from HP. These guides cover the new features available in the 3.0 software, explain what features you will lose from the 1.3 or 2.5 versions, and of course provide step by step instructions on how to perform the upgrade. The guides are also included on the upgrade disks, but I’m providing these copies with the permission of HP to give you a chance to review them prior to performing the update.
EX470 and EX475 Software Update Guide (right-click and Save-As)
EX485 and EX487 Software Update Guide (right-click and Save-As)
Backing Up Your Data
While the Server Recovery process is generally quite safe, HP recommends that you back up your data from your Windows Home Server prior to performing the 3.0 update. This can be accomplished by copying data to your PCs, or using external hard drives or storage enclosures. If you have too much data on your server to fully back it up, you may want to carefully consider if performing this upgrade is the right thing for you to do.
With those warnings, I’ll state that I performed an upgrade on both the EX475 and EX487 with no issues and all my data remained intact.
Performing the Server Recovery
In order to get the 3.0 software onto your MediaSmart Server, you must perform a Server Recovery. This process replaces the Windows Home Server operating system on the System Drive of your server with an updated version that includes the HP 3.0 software. The process is covered in the Upgrade Guides linked above, in our Wiki, and you are also guided step-by-step when you insert the Server Recovery DVD into your client PC. Your data should remain intact on the server through this process, however you will have to recreate your user accounts on the server, re-install your Add-Ins, and possibly make other configuration changes.
Start by inserting the Server Recovery DVD into your client PC, and following the onscreen instructions.
Once you’ve powered on your server and used the paperclip to enter Recovery mode, the software should discover the server and give you the option of performing a Server Recovery or Factory Reset. You’ll want to do the Server Recovery to preserve your data.
The Recovery process can take 15 – 60 minutes to complete depending on your network speed, it took about 20 minutes to complete on my gigabit network at home. Once the process has completed, your server will reboot a couple of times and then be ready for you to set up.
Next you will run the Client Software Installation from the included CD. First the HP Client Connector software will install, and then the Windows Home Server Connector.
The setup process is the same as you’ve seen when initially setting up your Windows Home Server in the past. You’ll have the opportunity to rename your server, set the Admin password, and download updates.
After the setup process, the HP 3.0 software will attempt to look for an update. At the time of this writing there is no newer update to download.
Note that the 3.0 software does not include Power Pack 3 for Windows Home Server, so you will want to navigate to the “General” settings tab and click the “Update Now” button a few times until no more updates are found. After doing so, the Windows Home Server Connector on your client PCs will likely automatically update themselves in the background.
At this point the Server Recovery process is complete and your server should be running the 3.0 software.
Tips and Hints
There are a couple of quick tips I suggest for users that are new to the 3.0 software that I’ll cover here briefly. One of the most important is to exercise a bit of patience when you first get things set up, particularly on the lower horsepower EX47x servers. It can take some time for the Twonky media streaming service to index all your media, for Drive Extender to make sure everything is happy, and for the Windows Indexing service to do its thing. Because of these operations, I suggest you do not immediately turn on the Video Converter or Media Collector, instead give the system a few hours to settle down and take this time to install the new Connector software on the rest of your PCs and Macs, or share your upgrade experience in the forums.
You can monitor the resource usage of your server in the System Status tab of the Server Console.
Be sure to re-create your user accounts and re-install your Add-Ins.
Add the “Converted Videos” shared folder to your Twonky config if you use the Video Converter feature, this will allow you to stream your videos via the Remote Media Streaming feature or to your iPhone or iPod Touch using the iStream app.
Twonky has been updated to version 5.1.1 which is even newer than the version on the EX490 and EX495 servers. This version is supposed to resolve the high CPU load issue that was experienced previously.
The EX470 and EX475 hardware does not support the Sleep feature in the 3.0 software, and HP recommends that you do not try to utilize this feature.
My MSS Fan Control Add-In does not seem to work with this update, I’ll investigate if it’s possible to resolve this issue and release a new version if I can.
And most importantly, have fun with your newly updated MediaSmart Server, and be sure to post in the forums with your experience or any questions you may have.
Performance Impressions
I’ve not performed any numeric benchmarks or comparisons of the servers before and after the 3.0 upgrade, but I can state that I have been satisfied and even pleasantly surprised by the performance of both the EX475 and EX487 running the 3.0 software. I will reiterate my recommendation that you try to exercise some patience and let the system do it’s initial indexing of all your media before turning on all the features.
I’ve converted numerous videos with the Video Converter, and the console remains accessible and interactive even while under high CPU load. The Media Collector has functioned well in the few tests I have performed, and the Remote Streaming has functioned similar to my EX495. The EX475 isn’t as powerful, obviously, but it does get the job done and for those of you that have performed the CPU upgrade it should do it very well.
Overall I’m quite pleased with this upgrade and think it is definitely worth the time and money spent. I would like to thank HP for providing me early access to and free copies of the 3.0 upgrade disks so that I could test and evaluate them.
Article by Alex Kuretz
I'm Alex Kuretz, and I'm the founder of MediaSmartServer.net. I was the Lead Test and Integration Engineer at HP for the MediaSmart Server until April 2008 when I moved on to other opportunities outside HP. I've kept active in the Windows Home Server community, creating several add-ins and helping users make the most of their Home Servers.
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The only information i was given that the disks are on back order. For me this is mainly a communications issue, which has been an ongoing issue now surrounding this upgrade. HP have not exactly communicated well with users on any part of the supply of the disks. I have gone from expecting them on the 3rd, the 16th, and now the 30th March. If they had said originally that they were only going to be delivered on the 30th March, then my expectations would have been set correctly. NO Problem!!! The problem though is that they have been promising to provide this upgrade for existing MSS users for a long, long time, and unfortunately this has been delayed several times. To a business user like myself it looks like the HP management decided not to miss the communicated deadline for the upgrade to be available again, but instead allowed us to pre-order without actually telling us that it was a pre-order. Call me cynical, but when something like this looks a spade it usually is a spade!!!!
Hopefully I will receive them on the 30th…. I will not be holding my breath though!!!!
OK, I get were you are coming from. (bad english)…I agree that the upgrade has and is a long time coming for us early buyers. Else I guess we are stuck with boat achors. I also understand that once set expectations should be met. Let’s hope that the wait is not in vien.
Some exp. from my EX470 3.0 Upgrade: (EX470, 0,5+1TB HDD, 2GB Mem, DE, Ordered 589822-ZH1-EMEA with descr. “HP EX470 MediaSmart Server GER” via german HP web / via Best2Serve 4thMar, shipment received Mo.8.Mar. Installed 13./14.. The installation was as described by HP / mediasmartserver.net and took ~60min. I used an XP Home SP3 DE client, with 100MB network. After upgrade completion, recognized 3.0 update 2 and WHS PP3 update started. After completion and reboot, i recognized a corrupted Backup DB! Tried to repair it using restarts, stabilization time, cleanup/reorgDB without success. Finally did a backupDB repair which ended in loss of 9 of my 10 client backups. So i decided to delete the last one as well, did a reorg and used BDBB to import my -luckily previously exported client backups-. Only remaining issues: EventID Warning WNAS 22 “VRM temperature is warning, value = 112 degrees C.” and Error WNAS 16 “VRM temperature becomes too high, value = 112 degrees C.” (already seen before, misleading as far i remember).
In the end, my EX470 is now up and running with good performance (!) on Rel.3.0 with update patch 2 (btw.: i didn’t observe the Twonky CPU load issue).
It definately took a long time for HP to provide the upgrade, but it was really worth the small investment. Thank you very much Alex for BDBB and also many thanks to HP !!!
I successfully installed the 3.0 update on my ex470 with LE-1640 CPU. I poked around with all the settings and then started a video conversion, the conversion ran for about 5-10 min. then the server shut off without warning. I let it sit for a couple of min then tried to restart it, it didn’t even restart all the way before shutting back down. Any suggestions? I’m afraid the upgraded CPU may be the problem but it was working great before the upgrade. Any suggestions?
I suspect the additional load caused by the Video Converter is exhibiting the problem. You can try additional cooling to see if that resolves the issue, otherwise you may need to downgrade the CPU or not use the Video Converter.
Alex: Have you had a chance to look into the problem with your Fan Control Add-in and the 3.0 upgrade? Us folks that still like our old MSS clunkers with the upgraded CPU could really use that handy little program to keep our systems cool and calm.
Thanks….
Done, http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/03/22/mss-fan-control-add-in-updated-now-supports-hp-3-0-software/
Thanks, Bob and Diehard, I’ve updated this article with the link to the newly updated Fan Control Add-In.
Thanks for that link. And for the help.
Maybe I can bug you guys with one more problem. Once I finally did let the server cool down and fired it back up I can’t seem to connect to it, all the lights are lit up and seem healthy but my Connector icon isn’t lit up and when I try to reinstall the connector software it is unable to find the server. Nor does it appear in my local network.
Thanks in advance.
Installed in 75 minutes. Worked perfect so far except that I had another server running 3.0 on the network and it would not install the connector software. I turned other server off and deleted connector software and reinstalled and it worked great.
Twonky was on automatically and installed entire media library in 35 minutes of 60,000 items that took 8 days on my EX490 using media collector. I have media collector off on the EX470 and it is running great!
Response is VERRRY good and it is working well! The other problem that came up was that the disks were mis-labled.
Anybody?
“Thanks for that link. And for the help.
Maybe I can bug you guys with one more problem. Once I finally did let the server cool down and fired it back up I can’t seem to connect to it, all the lights are lit up and seem healthy but my Connector icon isn’t lit up and if I try to reinstall the connector software it is unable to find the server. Nor does it appear in my local network.
Thanks in advance.”
Scott, I’ll suggest you post in the Troubleshooting forum, you’ll get a faster response from the broader community there.
Scott.
We have the same EX470 with an LE1640. Mine now runs at 40 to 42 degrees C at idle and at 52 to 54 at 100% CPU load. I did see 60 Degrees when it was on for about 1 hour at 100% but it quickly came down. Honestly 60 degrees C is below the max operating temperature of 65 degrees C.
On occasion I have had problems with my Server Desktop console not coming up or properly connecting on two servers with the new software. Usually it is due to 100% CPU use and no overhead left to allow connection or any other functions. Remote desktop would let me in and and right click on the bottom bar and start task manager to see what is running at so high a power. You can also see your CPU usage at that time. I had to shut down a few programs to regain control of my server to get it to work properly again.
Thanks Eidos.
I’ve posted the question over in the forums.
Now that I have my disks (labelled incorrectly of course) I am ready to proceed. This is a great guide but I have one small question as a newbie – I realize that any applications I have on the server will have to be reinstalled.
But as I have a certificate for my website – how do I go about getting that re-installed?
@Jeff – Glad you like the guide! How did you install the cert in the first place? You’ll want to back it up and re-apply it the same way you did before if it’s a custom cert. Your cert provider should have instructions on how to do that.
Re: Certficate, I go it from Comodo but it was a challenge getting the information from them. I ad to make a pending request, get the certificate from them and then apply it – I don’t want have to go through the hassel of emailling them back and forth. I have the certificate in backup and simply want to add it
I received my US 47x upgrade disks 3/22 (a week earlier than promised
and installed them today.
WARNING: my disks were mis-labelled. Server Recovery disk was actually the PC Restore disk !! (and vice versa)
I followed Alex’s instructions and all went to plan with patch 2 installing as soon as I started up the console for the first time. All folders appear to still be there, now to reconnecting users… PCs… etc.
Just got my discs today, ordered Monday I think, so quick. And my discs do not appear to be mislabeled. Would have been nice if these were on a torrent . . . but at least I have the weekend to work on the update.
My discs were also mislabeled.
Knock up job, HP…
Has anyone done the 3.0 while replacing the Main Drive and with USB external drives attached using Win 7 64x ? I failed horribly last night .. For one thing with my 4 external hard drives attached it would not let me use the paperclip to do the restore instead of going purple/red it just went red solid .. so when i removed all 4 ex USB drives it let me do the restore but had issues finding the server during console install once it did and got to the naming part it never finished at the end it where it was collecting back ups would always have a error .. so when i went into the folder nothing was there but when i RD in i could see all my drives were attached … nothing but trouble : ( so i just stuck my old drive back in and gave up .. luckily nothing was lost
Martin,
Our disks must be from the same batch… mine were mis-labeled as well. Too bad mine took over a month to get to me.
I upgraded my EX485 to v3 at the weekend. It went well, although I can’t seem to register my domain name for remote access. I used to have a TZO HP domain name (eg myserver.HPHomeServer.com) but it lost this setting during the upgrade. Now I only have the option to register a new domain name – if I try to enter my existing name it says it’s not available. Any ideas how I can use my existing domain name?
Also, the media collector for the Mac doesn’t seem to pick up my main iPhoto library which is stored under the ’shared’ folder. It only picks up individual users’ iPhoto libraries.
Thanks,
Matt
Has anyone found the new S3 online backup software after upgrading to the 3.0 version? I tried redownloading from the EX475 page but it says I need Server 1.3.1 to run. The HP upgrade guide said I could find it by the Add Software button in the console but it only shows a paid version and not the HP Online backup free version.
Alex’s guidance – “Try completely unconfiguring and reconfiguring your Remote Access URL” – worked for me, thanks Alex!
I clicked the Configure button on the Remote Access tab, and with some trepidation, selected “release your current domain name”. I then clicked the Configure button again, logged in with my Windows Live ID, and selected my original domain name (the only choice in the “Choose a registered name” dropdown). I went back to the Remote Access tab, it automatically went through the Repair process, and everything worked again.
Glad to hear that worked for you, Peter, thanks for sharing your results.
An update to my earlier comment about my TZO domain name not working. I called HP and they said they were aware of an issue and that I should call TZO to resolve it. TZO support were helpful and made a change to my domain name while I was on the phone – this fixed it and I was able to re-register my domain name again. They said it’s due to a problem with HP’s upgrade and that HP should be fixing it. When that will happen I don’t know…
I couldn’t get the media collector to correctly pick up my iPhoto library which was stored in the ‘Shared’ folder. I checked permissions and everything looked ok. When I moved it to my own folder it picked it up immediately. It works well, except that the collector splits the photos into ‘original’ and ‘modified’ folders. It would be nice if the tool had some intelligence and only collected original if there was no corresponding modified version.
I just attempted upgrading my EX475 from version 1.3.8.25155 to 3.0 Patch 1 using the Server Recovery Disc I purchased from HP. The process seemed to go smoothly and only took about 20 minutes over my 1GB network. However, after it got to the “Downloading software from your home server ____ , 100% complete step, it presented my the old style set of dialogs to install and configure the connector software on my client computer. I went through that as normal. None of the new looking dialogs you show above after the “downloading 100%” step ever showed up. The steps above and the instructions document mention that the server should reboot itself more than once during the process. It only rebooted once. I used the connector app on the client PC to connect to the server console and it looks identical to the original. Nothing new and the version still shows as 1.3.8.25155. I tried the process again all over from the start, but now the Windows Home Server application will not uninstall from my client PC. No errors, just doesn’t uninstall. What do I do now?
@ Dave Adams ~ Is it possible for you to post your issue in the forums where you can display some screen shots so I and others can better understand your issue and try to work out a solution for you. The forums offer abit more editing tools then the comment section here. I look forward to helping you anyway I can.
I am planning on performing the upgrade to 3.0 this weekend. I will be installing a new hard drive for the system drive (current system drive is exhibiting errors). I have no data on the system drive, all data is on 4 additional drives (3 in the MSS and 1 in a Sans Digital eSata box). Will all my data that is not duplicated and all client backups be rebuilt or will that be lost?
Also, if something goes wrong, I assume I could just install the original system drive and I should be back up and running.
ni444, any data that resides on the system drive will be lost unless it is duplicated. If you’re certain nothing is on it then you should be safe. It’s not as simple as reinstalling the system drive, you’d need to perform a Server Recovery again.
Help!!! The 3.0 upgrade on my EX475 has been running for close to two hours now, and it isn’t even halfway there!
There is nothing else running on the computer, and the task manager shows that the WHSRECOVERY.EXE process is using barely 2% CPU. I am in a quandary about touching anything… wonder if I can just abort the process and restart. Am scared of losing my kids’ childhood photos (not all have been backed up!).
What options do I have if the upgrade does not finish, or aborts midway due to whatever reason (power failure, DVD drive crashing, etc)!
@ Ameer ~ The recovery process only overwrites the OS Partition on your servers System Drive which is a 20GB Partition as it reinstalls the WHS OS and of course the HP software your upgrading too. Your data is perfectly safe but once you get through this you may want to back up those precious pictures and other things you value most thats stored on your server.
You can try to let it run its course or restart the recovery process which by the way only takes about 1 hour then of course you need to spend time getting all the updates and then time reconfiguring your server so about 2 hours in total. Longer if you type with 1 finger.
If you find yourself in a real jam please post a request for help in the forums and myself or others will be more then happy to help you.
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