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Did this site influence your decision to purchase the MediaSmart Server?
No, I found this site after I purchased my MSS 36%  36%  [ 97 ]
No, this site is a nice resource but other factors influenced my decision to buy the MSS 4%  4%  [ 10 ]
Yes, this site helped me decide not to buy the MSS 1%  1%  [ 3 ]
Yes, this site helped me decide to buy the MSS 58%  58%  [ 159 ]
Other, I just want to participate in this poll 1%  1%  [ 4 ]
Total votes : 273
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 4:48 pm 
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:offtopic:
Why not use TurboTax, save the account fees and buy an extra hard drive??!!! :beer:

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 6:18 pm 
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:mss: Well, in the interest of getting back :ontopic: , our guy has proven to be so good in the past, I may be able to populate all 4 spots by virtue of his fees, which really aren't all that unreasonable....then I can really learn how best to optimize and use the MSS!

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 1:32 pm 
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I'm extremely interested in getting an MMS...I'm hoping this site will help me answer my questions so I make the big decision.

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Primary use: Serving media to Plex on my Mac Mini, streaming music online and to my iPhone.


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PostPosted: Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:48 pm 
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jas8340 wrote:
I'm extremely interested in getting an MMS...I'm hoping this site will help me answer my questions so I make the big decision.


Just like the Stimulus Plan, get the MSS and figure out what it is later :mrgreen:

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PostPosted: Sat Jan 31, 2009 4:40 pm 
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JohnBick wrote:
:offtopic:
Why not use TurboTax, save the account fees and buy an extra hard drive??!!! :beer:


Update and a share - John, we'll go with the EX485 (single drive) after all, especially with the deal I just found:

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec_v2. ... ia=AA75026

Seagate 1TB SATA bare drives for under $60.00! At this price, I've ordered three of them to populate the three empty bays in the EX485. That works out to about $40.00 over the cost of the EX487, and one heck of a lot more storage! :mss:

With this deal, we can still afford to go and visit our friendly CPA (and he is a nice guy).

One question, however - as these are bare drives, will I need any SATA cables, or are the necessary cables provided in the drive carriers that then go into the bays? I'd just like to try and have all I need on hand for when the EX485 arrives, so I can set it up properly.

Thanks,

Bob

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PostPosted: Sat Jan 31, 2009 8:41 pm 
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BobV55 wrote:
One question, however - as these are bare drives, will I need any SATA cables, or are the necessary cables provided in the drive carriers that then go into the bays? I'd just like to try and have all I need on hand for when the EX485 arrives, so I can set it up properly.

Thanks,

Bob


Hey Bob, congrats on the great deal. You don't need cables for the drives, when you put the drives in the bays they should lock right in.

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BobV55
PostPosted: Sun Feb 01, 2009 7:14 am 
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Thank you Damian! I didn't think I'd need any additional cabling, but it never hurts to check. As to the deal, it is the best I've seen thus far, and that's why I posted the link here, in case anyone else wants to take advantage of it.

Thanks,

Bob

Edit - 2/2/2009 - Cue up Queen, "Another One Bites The Dust" for background music.....

Here's the gem I found in my email today....

Thank you for placing an order with mwave.com. It is with our deepest apologies that we notify you of a pricing error that occurred on our web site over this past weekend. The price for the Samsung hard drive that is included in your recent order, was unfortunately advertised in error due to a vendor miscommunication.

Unfortunately all orders placed for this item, are regretfully being canceled, as our vendor is unable to fulfill the stock or price for this item. The item has been removed from our site, and any payments that have been processed by our automated payment services are being returned immediately. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you. It truly was an honest mistake, and mwave is deeply concerned about the situation.

All customers who placed an order for this item, will receive a $20 OFF coupon for any future purchase with mwave, as a token of our appreciation of your understanding. The following coupon code will be activated for your account on file with us by the end of the day.


So....although that one fell through, at least I know now that I won't need any cables and can shop for bare drives that the retailer will actually ship!

Apologies to anyone who tried to jump on the deal - I didn't see this coming when I posted on the weekend.... :hm:

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PostPosted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 3:31 pm 
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Howdy all!

I just ordered an ex485 from HP, and this site definitely helped me to make that decision! I've spent over a month researching the MSS and WHS, and have finally pulled the trigger! I'm definitely looking forward to its arrival. I also plan to buy a couple 2TB drives to get me started.

My planned usage (for now):
- Backup my main Vista rig and my wife's XP laptop
- Run iTunes on it to manage music/movie library, and stream media to 1 AppleTV and 1 AirTunes device
- Store/manage photos and home videos
- Serve photos to the web
- Serve files to the web
- Run uTorrent (nice How-To I just read today!)

That's a start. I've read about a few add-ins I'd like to try, and we'll see where it goes from there!

Great forum! :D


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 8:25 pm 
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I ordered the EX485 along with 2 Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive - OEMs at Newegg. While I read more of these posts, I am gradually adding all my computers to this network. Consolidating all my files into one area will help me maintain all changes to these files. Being able to access these files away from the office is going to be great.

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 8:43 pm 
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Not sure it is a valid sample size for a low margin of error, but having 56% indicate this site influenced their decision to buy an MSS means this site has influenced some 1,460 individuals to buy an HP MSS and, with it, WHS.

I think that is an important statistic to pass on to HP and MS...

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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2009 7:35 pm 
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I decided to take the plunge after finding this site. I was a little on the fence on either buying the MSS, building my own or even just using an external hard drive to back up my data. I'm glad I was able to find a site I can go to for help or to learn more about what I just bought!

Luckily for me I was able to get the 485 at newegg for 499, a free Hitachi 1TB hard drive, free shipping, and then I had a 10% off (up to $40 off) code to boot. I also have a spare 1.5TB WD Green drive so I'll have (approximately) 3.25TB of space for backups.

:sanjuan:

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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2009 8:39 pm 
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Hegothey wrote:
I decided to take the plunge after finding this site. I was a little on the fence on either buying the MSS, building my own or even just using an external hard drive to back up my data. I'm glad I was able to find a site I can go to for help or to learn more about what I just bought!

Luckily for me I was able to get the 485 at newegg for 499, a free Hitachi 1TB hard drive, free shipping, and then I had a 10% off (up to $40 off) code to boot. I also have a spare 1.5TB WD Green drive so I'll have (approximately) 3.25TB of space for backups.

Outstanding, Hegothey! Welcome to the World of MSS/WHS! Glad we were (collectively) able to help you make a decision!

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PostPosted: Sat May 30, 2009 9:33 pm 
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Hello all,

Total WHS newb here, but I finally decided to pull the trigger. HP is running a $75 off sale that ended today, plus I found a $30 coupon. On top of that my job gets discount with HP so I picked it up an EX485 for $472.51 shipped! This site was totally a deciding factor in the decision. You guys have done some amazing things with it and showed me it's worth it.

A little background:

I work for a large media/television company doing IT. I have been working with computers in some capacity for my entire life (I'll be 33 in 5 days :wink: haha). Originally I was looking at a backup solution when I started looking into the WHS MSS. My current main rig has 2x750g Samsung Spinpoint F1's in RAID0 for 1.3TB of storage. This machine also acts as my Vista Media Center PC running MyMovies so I can watch my DVDs that I've ripped in VOB format on my HDTV via my Xbox 360. I backup every week to a 1TB external drive. This drive is currently full. I also have a Dell XPS Gen II laptop with a 60g drive, and a web server with a 60G OS drive and a 300GB storage drive.

Although there is nothing vital on these other machines, it would be nice to be able to back them up. I was considering going with another external but then you have to figure out what data is where, and it gets to be a hassle. I was looking into NAS as a possible solution, but then I thought to myself, if I'm going to buy a NAS, why not look into a WHS solution? That way I can automate my backups, and I heard that you can stream media to your LAN via MediaConnect as well. Not necessary, but still kind of cool.

So then it was off to the [H]Forum where I frequent whenever I am looking at buying something new for the PC. I immediately found a post where they referenced here for all of my WHS MSS needs, and that's how I ended up here.

Sorry for the long-winded story, but that's it. Thanks for listening, and thanks for making the decision an easy one to buy an MSS.


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PostPosted: Sun May 31, 2009 6:04 am 
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Not so long-winded!

Welcome to the Worldof MSS/WHS, LittleMike! Good to have you aboard.

I do hope you haven't "worked with computers in some capacity for your entire life" --- YET!

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PostPosted: Sun May 31, 2009 10:31 am 
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JohnBick wrote:
Not so long-winded!

Welcome to the Worldof MSS/WHS, LittleMike! Good to have you aboard.

I do hope you haven't "worked with computers in some capacity for your entire life" --- YET!


Thanks, John. Haha, it's true. Ever since the days of the Commodore 64, and then the 286 architecture and on up from there. I have been working with computers since I was in the third grade, so I'd consider that my whole life. It certainly is most of it. :P


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