HP EX475 MediaSmart Home Server (AMD Live, Windows Home Server, 1 TB Hard Drive) | 
| Brand: Hewlett-Packard
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New (6)
Rating:  109 reviews
Sales Rank: 64
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Home Server
CPU Manufacturer: AMD
CPU Speed: 1.8
Processors: 1
Hard Drive Size: 1000
Modem: None
Shipping Weight (lbs): 20
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 9.2 x 5.5
Warranty: 1 year warranty
MPN: GG796AA#ABA
Model: EX475
UPC: 883585222643
EAN: 0883585222643
ASIN: B000UXZUZC
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Features:
| • | Conveniently centralize your files and access them from an internet-connected computer | | • | 1 TB of storage space on 2 500GB hard drives, expands via 2 additional hard drive bays. | | • | Automatically backup and protect the digital memories on your home PCs running Windows XP and later operating systems | | • | Stream photos, music and videos to PCs on your network or to your TV or stereo system | | • | Powered by Microsoft Windows Home Server software and 1.8 GHz, 64-bit AMD Sempron processor |
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Amazon.com Product Description
Maximize the power and potential of your home network with the HP EX475 MediaSmart Server, which enables you to conveniently centralize your files and access them from multiple PCs in your home. Based on AMD Live processing power, the MediaSmart Server enables you to back up your home's PCs as well as share and enjoy digital music, home videos and photos from any computer or entertainment system on a home network. The server also has the expandability to grow with your family's changing needs. 
The stylish HP MediaSmart Server easily fits into your living room or office decor. | 
Its small size will fit on top of even the most crowded desk, and it offers wireless access when connected to a Wi-Fi router (via the Gigabit Ethernet port). | This sleek, streamlined micro-tower design is perfect for use in the home office or the living room, and its perforated steel exterior panels provide cool, quiet operation. The EX475 MediaSmart Server features 1 TB of capacity (2x500 GB drives, SATA, 7200 RPM), 512 MB of installed DDR2 RAM, four hard drive bays for additional expansion using off-the-shelf SATA I or II hard drives, a Gigabit Ethernet port for ultra-fast networking (and connection to a wireless router), four USB 2.0 ports (1 on the front, 3 on the back) for connecting to additional hard drives, and an and an eSATA port for high-speed data transfer to external storage devices--up to 6 times faster than existing solutions. It's quick and easy to set up your HP MediaSmart Server and create up to 10 user accounts using the Microsoft Windows Home Server software. You can also open a predefined Guest account for additional file sharing capabilities. The HP MediaSmart Server also lets you set up your own secure personal web address to allow file access by remote users. Easily Enhance Your Network
Expand your storage possibilities with the MediaServer's four hard drive bays. | Every PC on your network will have the Control Center software, giving users the ability to browse shared folders on the HP MediaSmart Server, add photos to the HP Photo Webshare and perform an immediate backup of their computer. Set the access privileges for each user at the shared-folder level to allow Read/Write, Read Only or No Access. You also control the remote access privilege for each user. Approved users will then be able to remotely access shared files and even applications on their home PC through a secure connection from any Internet-connected PC. 
AMD LIVE Smarter Digital Entertainment | Share Your Media
Use included HP Photo Webshare software to easily and securely share photos stored on your HP MediaSmart Server with select friends and family. A quick link to Snapfish allows easy photo printing. Enjoy digital music, photos, video and files from any networked PC. Stream content directly to your home entertainment center using a digital media adapter (DMA). The DMA device accesses the media files and coordinates the streaming process between the HP MediaSmart Server and your entertainment device. Protect Your Data
Keep your PC files safe with automatic backup for multiple PCs. You can customize the frequency of backups and how many backups are stored. Files accidentally deleted can be easily found on the backup image and copied to your PC. In the event of hard drive failure, the included HP PC Restore disc is all you need to return your PC and all your data to their original condition. Other Features
- Centralize your iTunes music libraries and playlists on the server for playback to any PC or notebook running iTunes on your home network.
- Incremental backups: After initial backup, only changes are backed up.
- Efficient single copy backup: A single copy of each file is backed up, no matter how many computers that files resides on in your home network.
- Add an internal or external hard drive to the HP MediaSmart Server, indicate that you want to add the disk in the Windows Home Server Console, and the HP MediaSmart Server storage grows. No need to power down the unit or manage drive letters for multiple hard drives.
- Remote access compatibility: Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Media Center Edition 2004 or higher, or Windows Vista Ultimate or higher
- File sharing compatibility: Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional, Windows 2000 Professional SP4, Mac, OS X, Linux.
- Backup compatibility: Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows XP
What's in the Box
HP MediaSmart Server, power cord, Ethernet cable, software installation disc, PC restore disc, server recovery disc, Quick Start and HP support guides. Important: The HP MediaSmart Server is not a stand-alone computer. You connect it to your networked computer system. No monitor is needed because its user interface is accessed from another computer.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 104 more reviews...
 Microsoft should be proud of their work, and a pretty HP box too! November 28, 2007
J. Stillman (Chicago, IL USA)
170 out of 173 found this review helpful
*EDIT 7/7/08* Power Pack 1 has fixed all of my issues with this server - and I would give it a 5 star review but Amazon will not allow me to change the rating.
First, I am programmer that works from home, with some expertise in setting up a usable home network. This little box allows me to remote in when i am on the road, replace a few NAS drives, simplify backup, AND share music and photos. There's only one REAL BIG complaint that I have, and that's working with 64 bit systems. I will go into that...
I added 3 1TB drives to this in minutes without shutting the system down. The drive sleds are very innovative, as they require no tools to use. You just need to lift a handle, pull out the sled, and place the new HD in using pins that flex to hold the HD in place. You then just put the drive back in its bay and lock the lever/handle in place. Visually, there is a light for each drive that will show you it is ready for use. You must use the WHS console to add the drives to your existing storage, and the light goes from purple to blue - and is ready to use. What is cool here is that your users don't see 4 different drives, but just 1 with all the space as if the existing drive automatically grew. If you want to replace a drive with larger capacity, it is simple as well. You use the console to remove the drive. When you remove a drive, WHS will copy the data off of that drive to the others (if they have room to do so) and then tell you when it is safe to dismount it.
Before this, I was using 4 seats of gotomypc professional for just under $600. 3 for my machines, and 1 for my wife's. I got the pro level because I wanted to administer all of the boxes centrally. My wife is definately not as technical as I am, but she needs access to her files from work and home (she works in higher ed, and is also working on her master's). Using the network shares and the web interface, she no longer has to rely on her laptop being on with gotomypc running. She can still remote in if her laptop is on, but she now can get the files she needs, and edit them at work. And send them back so she has the most up to date at all times. I am keeping 1 account of gotomypc active, because you cannot remote into a 64 bit OS from the web interface at this time. But the cost savings here almost pay for this alone!
I have three NAS drives, and two of them are going away as obsolete. I mainly used them for backup using Retrospect. I still am keeping Retrospect for my Windows x64 boxes and my linux clients, as the backup doesn't support 64 bit OS's at this time. I am backing up to the WHS thru Retrospect, and it is being backed up to the other NAS. The WHS allows you to duplicate shares to multiple drives, so this is in a since like having 3 backups of the data. For the 32 bit Windows clients, this backup is near perfection. It's mindlessly simple to set up, and it keeps multiple backups and automatically disposes of the older ones if you need the space. The mindless backup for 32 bit clients is easily paying for the rest of the cost of this box.
So for 64 bit users, this may not quite be for you just yet. Microsoft has stated that they are working on the 64 bit client for WHS, but gives no release date. As soon as they get this, it will serve my needs much better. Both remoting and backup can be solved for 64bit OSs if you have the know-how, so it's not as terrible as some might make it, but is annoying enough that I deducted 1 star for each.
The sharing functionality for music/video is really nice. Two of the pre-existing shares are called "music", and "video" and if you have a media center extender/XBOX360, it will show up there as a media center with whatever playable content you happen to put there. It won't magically allow you to play iTunes AACs, but any format that your media center could play, it will work. If you do have iTunes - it may add more value because you can have the system create a music database from ALL of the iTunes user's machines. I use iTunes and so does my wife, but this won't work for us because I'd like to be able to use the music directory directly available to iTunes for each of us, so that we both share the same song list, and if she buys a song, then it shows up in my iTunes library and I can make a playlist with that song in it. This is *almost* how it works with the iTunes sharing here. I can see a shared system named "HP MediaSmart Server" but you can't copy the songs locally, and you can't edit the playlists it contains. Kind of a bummer, but it may work for you.
The photosharing web application is a nice idea. You can make albums using photos from your machine - but suprisingly you can't just pick from the "photos" share on the drive. So if you want to do that - you must map a drive to the "photos" share and choose them that way. Not very efficient to copy from the network instead of directly from the disk! You can then create a list of people to share the album with, and send out a message to look at your album. You can choose existing users you've set up for remote access, or create a visitor profile. This allows you send it to Grandma and not have to create a "Grandma" user on the server itself. Very nicely done.
Another small caveat is if you use TZO for Dynamic DNS currently. You need to call TZO to get your existing account setup correctly on the box.
Update 3/11/08:
I've had the EX470 for 4 months now, and I am still confident that at this time it warrants a 3 of 5 star review. There is still no connector to Vista Ultimate 64bit. I have not used the photo sharing application because there are just much better options on the internet. I do stream to my XBOX 360 and PS3 - but you can't stream MP4 based video - so this means no M4Vs, no DivX/Xvid. It has no problems streaming MPEG movies, so this is a limitation of both the PS3 and 360.
In terms of add-ins - I have tried a lot of them, but kept 2 - Jungle Disk and LobsterTunes. Jungle Disk uses the Amazon S3 SOAP APIs to back up your home server's share files online. It is slow, but it works and is very cheap to use. It does not backup the WHS OS or local files - just the shares. LobsterTunes exposes my music collection to my smart phone. It does not stream them, but makes a local copy on the device - so make sure you have an unlimited and fast data plan for this. I've used it to pull up obscure music for a friend to sample, and it's a keeper. I have also installed Raxco's PerfectDisk software to keep the drives from becoming overly fragmented.
I have upgraded the memory to two gigabytes as well. This should be the standard in these servers. It made a HUGE difference in throughput and response times from the WHS OS. I have also installed my own SSL certificate because I was sick and tired of seeing the bad certificate message everytime I used the web interface. Most people won't get this problem because they are using the standard windowshomeserver.com domain. Those that use custom domains will know what I mean.
Microsoft had promised a patch due at first in January, then slipped to February, then March. Known as Power Pack 1, it is supposed to add support for 64 bit Windows clients, allow you to back up the OS itself, and other smaller niceties. I wouldn't hold your breath for this patch. The slippage occurred because of a nasty bug in WHS ( google for KB #946676). This bug causes files to get corrupted if you attempt to modify the files directly on the home server. It will only affect WHS boxes that have multiple hard drives for storage. Now, all storage drives on the OS will show as one drive, with WHS constantly monitoring and moving the files around to "balance" the amount of space used on each drive. The problem is that in order to show the shares as a single drive, their contents are mapped and cached in memory. It's basically like a switchboard operator that knows where your files are supposed to be. Most of the time, there is no problems, but the mechanism to update the switchboard operator's lookup is not keeping up with the balancing when there is a lot going on. So instead of getting Klondike 5-3226, now your getting mostly that, but maybe a bit of Klondike 5-3227.
I've only had this happen once, to my wife. She wanted to archive some of her Outlook email, so she created a PST on the server and moved the emails over to the new PST. The corruption occured in the middle of this - and she lost all of the emails that were copying over to the share. This was an easy solve issue, because the WHS backup had run and she only ended up loosing the last 5 emails she received. Now, I have trained her to save locally and copy to the server, and pull down from the server first, modify and repeat. There have been no problems since.
 Saved my photos November 3, 2007
Janet Levinger
87 out of 103 found this review helpful
I have been using a beta version of the HP MediaSmart for quite a few months. Two weeks ago I discovered that over a month ago during some quick "I need disk space delete non-essential stuff" exercise, I had accidentally erased a large directory of travel photos from my laptop. And I discovered that I had not first copied them to my usual "Photos" directory on my home server first. I was totally bummed for a few hours until i realized that my laptop has been automatically backed up on the home server for months. I went back to the old backups (they are set to save there for a long time), and was thrilled to find the photos right where they were before i deleted them. What a relief. That alone paid for the product times 10.
HP QUALITY November 21, 2007
G. Hoza (USA)
82 out of 95 found this review helpful
I have owned and operated HP micro and mini computers since 1982. The name "Hewlett Packard" has for me always stood for quality (except when Compaq was acquired). I just got my EX470 direct from HP. Since the holidays are here I couldn't wait for a preordered unit from Amazon - so I paid a little more to get it direct from HP. [If you are not in a hurry then Amazon is the way to go - as I would not trust any other mail order house to order sophisticated electronics]. The EX470 is a one 500GB windows home server. The EX475 has two 500GB drives. I opted for the one 500GB drive so that I could fill the other 3 bays with 1 TB Seagates (7200.11) so that I could have 3.5TB of needed storage. [See Tomshardware dot com for a great review of those drives. If you are interested I ordered the drives for a great great price from NewEgg.] It is important that you have at least 2 drives in this unit to enable the server to make 2nd backup copies of important files that are backed up from your several PCs on your network, otherwise you risk losing your backup in the event that a hard drive on your server quits.
Anyway, the unit is a piece of art - you can't stick the thing in a closet - as it is too pretty! Very well made hardware. This is not a piece of plastic that rattles, rather it is tightly assembled, dense (surprisingly) and well, beautifully put together. Mark my words, you are getting far more for your money by buying this hardware than anything you have purchased for less than $600 in the past! I simply plugged in the power and the gigabit lan and presto - we're connected. After a minute or so system test you incert the appropriate discs into one of your networked computers and within 15 minutes you are up and running.
I have yet to configure the remote capabilities of the server and will wait until I understand what I am doing. One thing you don't want to do is make all your personal data available to anyone on the internet! So I will go a little slow in that department. Once I get my other Seagate drives on Monday I hope to add to this post. If for some reason I gave too many stars to this review I will make it known in that supplement that my opinion has changed. However I doubt that that will happen! :) Buy it - you'll like it.
UPDATE: OK it is now January 9, 2008. Since my initial review I have replaced the original Seagate 500GB drive with a 1TB Seagate 7200.11 one, and installed 3 other 1TB Seagate's in the other 3 bays. In addition, I have also added a Rosewill eSATA external HD enclosure and added another 1TB Seagate drive. Now I have 5TBs and I feel I will need more space after a year or so.
For those of you who are kicking the tires on this Windows Home Server, I would stick with HP. In a few more weeks both HP and Microsoft will be coming out with a series of software upgrades and enhancements. There will be features for you to actually backup all or part of your Windows Home Server. 64 bit clients as well as 32 bit clients will have complete functionality. Moreover, McAfee virus protection will be added on a 6 month free trial (which is good if you plan to do remote sharing). [Microsoft is also working on a fix of certain corruption problems people have had using certain software to edit and save to the server directly.] So far I am completely happy with my purchase. I am looking forward to the exciting new add-ins that will be available for this unit in the future. I would give this unit six stars if I could. :)
Excellent now that PowerPack 1 has been released November 23, 2007
J. S. Ruzicka (San Francisco, CA)
66 out of 74 found this review helpful
I'm updating this review again because PowerPack 1 has just been released which fixes several problems and the data corruption bug.
THE GOOD: The remote access to files works VERY well. I've been able to upload and download files to/from work and while travelling. The web interface has been improved and there is now an ActiveX control that allows multiple files to be uploaded while showing a progress bar and the status of the files (this only works in I.E., Firefox still uses the old interface).
The software is very easy to set up and use. The console lets you manage most everything.
The photo sharing software works great and lets you share photo galleries with your family and friends without having to use up any of your allotted 10 user I.D.'s.
Adding more storage is a breeze, you don't even need a screwdriver.
The server box looks great, is very small, and is very quiet, with far less fan noise than the computers to which it is connected.
With PowerPack 1, the shared drives can be backed up to an external hard drive for off-site backup peace of mind. The software can now wake up all PC's on your network to back them up. There is a repair utility for corrupt backup files. I've been backing up files for about 8 months now, though, and have never had a problem.
THE BAD: Support is non-existent. E-mails are not answered, and, after an hour on the phone, I was told that phone support has yet to be established for this product because it is too new. I don't know if this has been fixed since I haven't had to call support again.
The incluced 512mb of RAM is not enough to do anything serious with this server, especially with all of the various add-ons now available. I found instructions online to upgrade to 2 gigs, and did so successfully, but this is not for the faint of heart since it involves disassembling the box (and voiding the warranty). The server should come with 2 gigs out of the box, even if it means upping the price $50.
THE BOTTOM LINE: This server is now a mature product. I would change my rating to five stars if I could.
A must-have for multi-PC families November 26, 2007
Cruzer
55 out of 59 found this review helpful
"You need a what? Why do we NEED a home server?" is what my wife asked incredulously when I told her I had to have the EX470 MediaSmart Home Server. If you're like our family, you have more than 2 PCs (we have 6 PCs, 1 media center, 2 XBOXs, and 2 MP3 players) and your music, photos, and multi-media are spread throughout the network. You also have never done a single backup of any of the PCs in your house and you're one hard-drive failure from losing those precious moments.
The HP MediaSmart Home Server, based on Microsoft's Home Server Edition is not your plain-vanilla backup drive. Instead it has some killer features:
- Speedy, intuitive setup in a great looking machine (took me literally 10 minutes to setup)
- Automatic backup with optional folder duplication
- Hot-pluggable storage allows you to expand storage up to 16 terabytes on the fly (we have 1 terabyte)
- Login remotely and upload/download files from anywhere
- Access other computers on your network remotely (like Go-to-My-PC)
- File/media serving and print serving (centralize your media and access it from any device)
- Setup a domain in a few clicks so you can share your folders with friends and family over the web
- Monitor all your PCs for security...you will get alerts if antivirus or the firewall aren't working
- Extensible "Add-ins" allow developers to build and offer (usually freeware) some cool features like remote management, mobile access, and dozens of other custom applications
- You can also sign-up for internet storage and backup your Home Server automatically (for additional safety) to offsite providers for as little as $5/month for unlimited storage
Overall, I consider the Home Server to be a breakthrough in home technology. There's no other backup drive or NAS on the market that offers the breadth of features or extensibility, in a centralized and automated fashion (for those lazy home administrators). I am really happy with this purchase and particularly happy that all of our family pictures are finally safe from hard-drive failure. I heartily recommend the MediaSmart Home Server.
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