I have had an EX470 from the beginning and used the Microsoft WHS Forums and the HP MediaSmart Home. It was was on the HP MediaSmart Home forum that I discovered this site. I now have a EX490 on order from one of the "deals" and should have it delivered next week.

I like this site, the administration, control, and the quality of the answers.

It's great to be here.

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HP MSS EX470 & Ex490, iMac 24" & 13" MacBook, Think Pad T61 with Win 7 Professional, Dell 4600 with Win XP Professional

Welcome to the forums, glad you finally made it here after owning the original EX470!!!

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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

Hello All, my name is Dale, but my nickname these days is Timbit, courtesy of my kids. I live in SouthWestern Ontario in Canada. I've been a browser of this forum shortly after the EX470 was released.

Originally, I was looking at the WHS as a possible solution to the "Files, Files Everywhere" problem that I was having and also to find a Better way to share my photo's with family. I was also looking at other NAS systems. However throughout my research, reading and browsing various forums, there was nothing out there that really grabbed me as a solution. When HP released the mediasmart EX470/5 series, that research brought me to this forum. I've been following the initial trial, tribulations and evolution of the mediasmart for quite a while. Then the EX495 was released. The release of PP3 was also a sign of good news. Now I saw a product that Grabbed me. Then with Cougar working on addins required to get Gallery going, my interest peaked even more.

I looked at building my own, and read with enthusiasm, cavediver's and dbone's experiences. However, not ever having built a computer (just tinkering with upgrades here and there), felt that building my own server might be a little beyond me right now. Therefore I decided that maybe getting my feet wet with a Mediasmart server might be the smarter way to go.

Then one day, I noticed my main desktop computer (an Intel P3 generation) that i've had and mothered for 10 years was getting into trouble. The system disk was only 20 GB and having XP SP3 with all the updates and all the normal home applications, the free space was getting dangerously low (1 GB free). I was having to remove applications, games, and do clean-up almost on a weekly basis just to keep the system going. 4 months of this and it was getting out of hand. What to do, what to do, I asked myself. Well after reading several posts of people who successfully restored laptops and desktops after viruses, disk crashes and the like, i thought why couldn't i do the same if i had this server. I have a 120GB disk also in this desktop, used now mainly for storage and games. So I believe i have my solution; to make a backup of this desperate desktop, switch the two drives (making the 120GB as the primary drive) and then restore the drive from the backup.

So I seriously started looking at purchasing the EX495, but was having problems finding a source in Canada. Well after a month of searching, contacting HP and then finally the post of some helpful forum members, i found a source. Then hit a speed bump, found a second source and finally have my EX495 on order.

So thats my story and I'd like to thank this great community for convincing me (although they didn't know it), that this was the way to go and helping me find a solution to my problem.

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To err is human ... but to really foul things up takes a computer.

Well, Dale, welcome to the world of MSS/WHS! Great to have you aboard!

Enjoyed reading the post!

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....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Great story, Dale, thanks for sharing! I really love hearing what is the final motivator to get the "lurkers" to sign up and participate.

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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.

First post here and my EX490 should be sitting on my front porch waiting for me when I get home.

Here's my little uneventful story.

I was on HP's site looking for a new desktop computer for one of my employees when my mind was starting to wander and I stumbled upon the "home server" link.

I hadn't really been looking for something like this per se, but I constantly complained at home to my wife, that there had to be an easier way to make our photos, itunes music, video, etc. accessible to both of our computers. I currently house all of this info on a WD 500gb external hard drive and my wife and I both run laptops. So, moving files around began to be a chore...and we constantly had the conversation about, "are those pictures still on your computer?". Or, "have you put those songs you bought on the HD yet?" iTunes sharing has helped this a lot, but backing up our files was also a needed endeavor.

I have 2 young daughters that I'm sure will take more advantage of the system than I will eventually, but this is a start.

From everything I've read, the Mediasmart is the perfect addition to our home plus gives us the ability to allow family to access photos without having to upload them to Photobucket and allows my wife to use her iPhone for photo sharing also.

Google is how I found this site, and came here looking for install tips and have found a LOT more info than I expected. Great info here guys...I'm sure I'll spend many hours reading.

Thanks for sharing your story, litljay, I have a feeling you'll both appreciate how the MSS centralizes things and gives you peace of mind. Do be sure to post if you have any questions or issues.

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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.

Hi Alex,

First off, let me say that I think you have a terrific site with lots of useful information.

I've been lurking here for several months now, before I bought my first MSS. I picked up an EX485 on sale in September when HP was phasing them out and began playing with it. I really liked the small form factor, the low power usage, and found the product to be incredibly useful - in fact so useful that I quickly outgrew it. The lack of an eSATA port multiplier was a big limiting factor for me so I ended up selling it to a friend and building a custom WHS system that I put together mostly out of spare parts.

In the meantime I had read your EX490/EX495 review and lusted after one of them, and a Sans Digital TR5M-B to go along with it. Well, thanks to some great Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals I managed to pick up some higher capacity drives along with Newegg's Rosewill equivalent to the TRM5-B and as well, I just ordered an EX495 that's on it's way to me. I can hardly wait!

So when my EX495 arrives it will be my third WHS system in 3 months. I'm a tinkerer who loves to constantly build and tweak systems, but the MSS boxes are just so darn sexy looking that I had to have another one! Not to mention that the Easter Egg light show will come in handy for the holidays!

I have an extensive background in software development and computer hardware, so I hope to be able to contribute some useful information to the forums.

Zen - first off welcome to the forums

That is great that you will have a nice new EX495 + Rosewell. I actually just picked up 5 2TB drives this past weekend because of the great deals as well (3 WD drives and 2 Seagate drives). I just set up my dad with the EX495 + TR5M, definitely a nice upgrade over the EX470 I was using before I went the DIY route.

Once again, welcome to the forums and don't hesitate to share any experience/insights you have based on your background (Alex is looking for someone to help him write an add in for the MSS that will take care of cats...)

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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

Hi Zen, welcome and thanks for joining the forums! I'm glad you find the site and reviews useful, thanks for sharing your story.

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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.

Hi everyone!

Found this site about a week ago.
Someone mentioned it and I thought I'd check it out.
Hope i will find solution to the questuion i am going to asked related to the server.

Nice to be a member of this site.

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r4 dsi

Welcome, Shaily & Zen, to the world of WHS/MSS! Great to have you both onboard!

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....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Hi All. New member, new owner of 4700. I used the howTo here to upgraded my bios and loved how the community was so involved. Thanks to the early explorers.

Welcome, afool622, to the world of MSS/WHS! Good to have you aboard!

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....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Hello everybody, My name is Bart and I found this forum as I made my first purchase of the EX490 sunday night.
Got it today, hooked it up and it's sitting at home transfering 349 gigs of files with it saying 1 day remaining, lol. Took the SN to work and checked up on the build specs, warranty and any previous ownership on it and happy I am the first owner of this brand new unit

Can't wait to get home and play around with this bad boy!