HP upgrading Home Server lineup, Apple may follow suit
HP MediaSmart Server
(Credit: HP)Hewlett-Packard announced Monday that it is upgrading its MediaSmart server lineup with new, more powerful hardware and, more importantly, with software support for Macs and improved over-the-Net streaming of users' media files. (A software update will allow users of existing MediaSmart boxes to access some of the new features.) Also Monday, 9to5Mac speculated that one of the Macworld announcements in January will be an expanded Time Capsule product with similar features.
Currently, HP's MediaSmart servers, running Microsoft's Windows Home Server software, cannot serve as backup platforms for Macs running the Time Machine backup software, and data stored on a WHS product is available only in a very limited fashion over the open Internet. Similarly, Apple's current Time Capsule backup appliance does not come with backup software for Windows PCs, and does not support media sharing over the Net.
The time is right for products like these, and more so for those that don't presume that families are running homogeneous environments. Any household with more than one computer and one digital camera is likely suffering from confusion in organizing and finding media, and centralized home hubs could be a big help. The living-room side of the equation still needs to be figured out, though. People want to get their photos and videos onto the big screens in their living spaces. While there are several decent digital media options for the home media center, many are too expensive or too complex for the mainstream audience (the Xbox 360 being perhaps a notable exception, as my colleague Josh Lowensohn has reminded me repeatedly).
My personal take: I own a first-generation HP MediaSmart server and have been very frustrated to find that my new MacBook couldn't access it to do a Time Machine backup. I blame Apple for this, primarily--without a hack, its software will only back up over the network to its own overpriced Time Capsule appliances. So I'm glad to see support coming for my particular configuration. I'm also really looking forward to having better access to my media files when I am not at home.
There's an in-depth review of the new HP MediaSmart server on the fan site MediaSmartServer.Net.
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe.
I beg to differ, yes it can as long as the Mac platform can see/access one or more of the server hard drives time machine will work. OS X can read but not write to NTFS file system, probably because of some back room door agreement or just because Apple is to arrogant. All you need to do is partition one of the server hard drives or better yet add another one and format it as a Mac OS or Unix or FAT 32 and time machine can use it. I know because I have a Mac.
On the other hand Microsoft is so arrogant it will not even recognize a Mac OS, linux or unix partition. I am not sure about their server software (It probably can out of necessity) but I know for a fact Millennium II, I mean Vista will not.
Genius.
SMB is the ideal cross platform solution. I use SMB shares on my linux server (with 3tb of storage in XFS filesystems, for those that care) to allow my mac and (my friends') windows computers to use the space. Collectively we keep our photos, music and videos on this system, which also records all our TV using MythTV software. The living room and big screen solution is also MythTV, though my PS3 (and I presume my friend's xbox 360) also is able to access the uPNP server that is built into MythTV, and thereby any of the recordings, videos, music, and pictures stored on the server.
The complexity is only in initial setup, and due to massive development efforts by the entire open source community, the complexity has continued to decrease significantly in the last couple years.
I have a windows home server... Microsoft makes the software ... HP makes a box that uses the software ...
HP's last media server came with a 500gb drive ... (mine was $300 on Black Friday - OfficeMax) ... new ones have a 750gb or 1tb and in the $600 range .. not such a great deal with 1tb drives going for $80.
That's about all there is to the story right .. bigger drives and higher price?
Anyone can make apps and plugins for the Home Server so I am kind of surprised to see hoopla about MAC ... now if it was Netflix and Hulu integration THAT would be a story.
I have never liked automated backup solutions as they give you a false sense of security thinking your files are backed up only to find out after a failure that the files you thought were backed up were not actually configured originally to be included.
Nope, a simple backup is done manually for me. Or a cron job on the linux boxen. But I always go back and verify that backup is valid on the server *before* I am in a position to need it.
Apple already copied us and went with regular PC innards. Oh I forgot...it`s a walled-garden Jobs controls so you DON`T GET PC choices like we do ;)
While this item seems like a good solution, I don't know how PRACTICAL it is, PC or MAC - I mean, every house is probably blessed with at least one tech geek, but showing everyone how to do it - then letting the kids loose to really screw it up?
Seems like a better small-business device than a home-use device, considering the scope and price. I'll stick with my manual backups anyways.
btw, i'm an all Apple/Mac house & am using an Intel iMac w/ a couple of 500GB FW HDDs as my media server, in the process of ripping DVDs/movies recorded from my HD cable box as WS SD & converting them to add to iTunes so i can put them on my iPod Touch as well as watch them anywhere @ home(via my network> MacBook> MBR TV) or possibly away from home. it's been pretty easy & straightforward. next is to get a 1TB ethernet HDD for Time Machine for my 3 Macs internal drives over my AEBS(n).
And talk about poorly written software , the latest update to Mac OSX hosed thousands of systems and MobileMe has been a fiasco. The bigger Apple has gotten , the WORSE it has gotten. Numerous hardware and software gaffes lately. Viruses ??? Never have gotten one and I don`t run any AV product. Just use common sense. Apple has all the problems MSFT used to have.
1) Have a spare computer lying around? See this article: http://www.kremalicious.com/2008/06/ubuntu-as-mac-file-server-and-time-machine-volume/. I set this up using an old Gateway, USB 2.0 PCMCIA card, and HSF-formatted 500MB G Drive. The initial backup took 13 hours, but after that, my backups are like clockwork... on the hour... 2-3 minutes each time in the background.
2) I haven't tried this, but it is a relatively new product. Imagine an adapter that converts any of your external hard drives to network accessible storage... without the need for a intermediate computer (like in my first solution). Now imagine that for less than 60 bucks. Check it out: http://www.addonics.com/products/nas/nasu2.asp. If it works, this is definitely the easiest/quickest solution. You may need to steal a little bit from the article in my first suggestion to get it working properly. I went with the first option because I was feeling extra geeky and I had the spare parts lying around.
hahahahhaahhahahahahhahahhahahaha
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by JumpinJappold
January 1, 2009 10:33 PM PST
- It looks like an air cleaner....
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