Hi Everyone,

I found this site when researching the ex495. It was informative review you gave that had me join the site. I figured I wuld need all the good resources I could find!! Thanks in advance.

Brian

I am new as well. Purchased my EX485 back in late August. Just getting it connected now. I bought it to aggregate our increasingly large media collection. I have no idea how to best utilize this piece of equipment. It seems it can do a lot. Hopefully, I can figure out how to best utilize it without screwing it up. I have some technical knowledge having built and upgraded my own PC's over the years but this is another world to me. Other than the manual I downloaded, it there a good resource here or elsewhere that helps a newcomer to MSS devices understand how it can be used?

Welcome to the site! This is an area that I've been thinking about more and more, unfortunately we don't have a great guide set up yet. You're probably best off exploring the resources here and at other sites, see what other members are doing with their servers, and let us know if you have a need that your server isn't filling and we'll tell you if we know how to help get you there.

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Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins? If so, be sure to Rate them at WeGotServed.

Thanks for the warm welcome. It is obvious I need to do my part learning but out of the gate I would like to know how people have set up their server and how they are using them so I can better understand the potential. Maybe a youtube review is in order.

Going into this I was solving for my wife's desire to secure all our photos. Of course, I am always game for a new tech toy. The final motivation was a slick deal. So I know it can back stuff up but also realizing it can do much more. I envision streaming my video over the network to my video displays in addition to aggreagting and distributing my other media. That is secondary right now. First things first.

Can I get clarity on one issue though:
I am not even sure I am going about data management correctly. Last night, I moved (redirected) the user files in Win 7 on the local pc drive o the server thinking that it will reduce the HD requirements on the local computer. I was also under the impression i could run a backup on the server drive as welll. I don't see that being very clear. Also, I am not sure how the media collector will work with this setup. Does it also collect files from the server? If this is not the optimal approach should I simply put a larger secondary drive on the local computer and store the user files there? I also have a laptop to bring on the network as well plus xbox 360 at some point. Will my thinking create some constraints down the road?

Thanks

Hi, found the forum on google and completely new to the whole home media server world. I' m about to order my unit but would like to get recommendations on what to get as far as getting the signal to my HD tv. Xbox, another small pc running media center? Please help totally lost.

Thank you,

William Lara

DJ Willy,

Welcome on board

I would suggest you take a look around the forum (in particular the media streaming section) to get some ideas. Also, I would suggest you start a separate thread regarding (talk about what you have in mind, what your setup is, what type of media, etc...) and I am sure members will chime in, I know I will

Once again, welcome.

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Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

I picked up a refurbished EX470 for a song. I heard about the deal on slickdeals. I googled the CPU part # that someone reccommended and this was the first link that came up.

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My HP Proliant ML110 G6 WHS2011 Server
My Clarkdale HTPC build thread

I also found this site via Google. My search was for "Mediasmart Server Forums." It looked like the forums were active and there were some good posts, so I posted a troubleshooting issue. I've received no useful suggestions yet, but only posted yesterday... Whenever I ask for help on a forum, I try to help a few other people. That is what communities are for. That is why I'm responding to your request. Thanks for hosting!

I've been considering buying a windows home server for some time. Previously I was using USB disks (three of them...) for backups and network shares for the PCs and Macs in the household. Now that EX 490 became available in Finland it was an easy decision. Still waiting for a D-Link DGS-1008D gigabit switch for hooking up the server to my network. Looking forward using the EX 490 for network shares, backups and media streaming to my brand new Logitech Squeezebox Radio. Found this site via mswhs.com.

Welcome to the gang

One of the things I really enjoy about sites like this is the diverse group of members. I guess you are getting settled in for the long winter, I imagine it must be beautiful there (I have been as far out as Stockholm).

As you get set up don't hesitate to ask any question, and once again welcome.

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Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Heard about this site from Google search for EX490 related information. Just ordered one from Amazon and I'm trying to do a little prep work before it arrives.

For some reason, I'm the "tech guy" at our house (probably like many others here!). At first, I'll be using the EX490 primarily as a backup solution for the 4 computers my family has.

Here's my question--on another thread here (can't find it again now), I saw several severe complaints about the 3.0 1.0 patch (I think that's correct). The complaints were primarily about excess CPU utilization on the server after the patch was installed. Should I be worried that I made a bad decision to buy the EX490--is the software really bad??

Thanks in advance,
R.L.

Welcome to the forums! I'm not sure what answer you expect to your question, since you're asking it on a site dedicated to enthusiasts of the MediaSmart Server. Some people have experienced high CPU load with the new patch, but I think the vast majority of people have not had issues. Do let us know how things work out when it arrives.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins? If so, be sure to Rate them at WeGotServed.

Hi,

I purchased a MediaSmart EX485 in August, primarily to provide a better backup system for the expanding number of computers in our house. A year ago it was one main computer, and another upstairs for the kids homework/gaming. Now with two teen-aged boys in HS, and a wife who wants her own dedicated computer, we're currently up to 5.

The Main was being backup with Acronis, which worked well (when I remembered to take the secondary backups out of the house - not often enough), but it wasn't going to scale very well to a bunch of computers with kids projects and my wife's work on her machine. I looked at either taking an old computer and building a Linux Server with it, or buying or building a WHS computer. I probably found this site then when doing research.

I'm now posting here because I got a good answer here about server recovery after posting to a couple of other WHS related forums, and not getting a response.

btw: I still have the same external enclosure for secondary backups, and probably will still not take it out of the house often enough.

I like that I can report my own post

Thanks for sharing your story, and I'm glad you got the answer to your question here!

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins? If so, be sure to Rate them at WeGotServed.

Well, found on google. Server admin for a small university dept (Microsoft servers...) Had at various times a 2003 server in my closet, currently a shuttle in the closet (and a shuttle for a main!) but have multiple terabyte mybooks and a couple of seagates hanging around for primary storage. Wanted something more expandable/managable - actually planned and ordered a rack mount server that's heading back to newegg, because I wanted something lower maintenance/lower power, yet easily expandable.

Spent Thanksgiving pondering a drobo, but the proprietary stuff scares me (if drobo dies, you have to buy another to recover?). Somehow, when researching, google took me here... the next day I had read a huge number of threads AND downloaded the trial to a VM, was impressed... today bit the bullet and ordered a 490 (I'll compress vid on my quad core, just want low powered NASish storage!) and two tera drives from newegg. (Of course, now I have to return the server case - opened but otherwise not touched. How's newegg on returns, besides the restocking fee?) Can't wait to get the snarl of cords from 4 mybooks off this desk.

While I wait, I'm pondering:

1. Sell the 4 USB mybooks and buy replacement internals? or...
2. Since new they're only 130 and an internal terabyte is 90ish, just call it a $40 loss, rip apart the mybooks, steal the drives, and use them internally? Anyone done this? Any issues?
3. This summer buying the esata sans digital bay for more expandability...
4. Just how much slower attaching the mybooks via usb (until I get the expansion bay) makes overall WHS performance...
5. How, being a MS server guy and having run - multiple times - home server networks out of the house, I could have let this WHS thing totally slip past me.

Not sure if any question other than 2 and 4 can be answered by anyone other than me Like people here seem to say - I could build a super server, but I want something that just works without futzing... and the storage mounting/mirroring idea seems real impressive to me. In any case, that's how I got here, and oh yeah, I'm Twy!

Twy