Just ordered an Asus Easystore running Windows home server.

Anyone have any tips on WHS?

Cheers 🙂

You might want to be a bit more specific

Yeah, that’s a bit of an open-ended question. Someone will be along shortly to tell you to format it and install Ubuntu.

The LightsOut add-on is worth installing. This allows your server to hibernate when it is not being used, but wakes it up immediately if any client computers are turned on. Saves you having to run your server 24-7.

Well…other than store, backup and *serve* media – I have no idea what other facilities it can do, or what I would want it to do.

LightsOut sounds like a good plan indeed! – cheers

Hmm, that sounds better than the NAS I bought recently. Although it does run linux so should be customisable eventually.

I’ve had one running for a couple of years. Just works, no hassles at all. Redundant storage, overnight backups, peachy.

You’d be better off with an Mac.

We already have a mac’s – I am better off with a PC!

ericemel,

Genuine question as you have macs already what made you get WHS over something like a mac mini running snow leopard server. I’m Looking to make a similar purchase and am interested to hear why you went this route.

Thanks

muppetWrangler
Sounds a bit geeky but I am quite into my hifi and windows does a better job than macs. (I am sure that will cause an argument….)

I just felt I have been paying through the teeth for Mac stuff with no advantage and having to live with the draw backs – though I do dislike anything pre Win 7.

Also
Acer 1.2tb WHS £200
Mini mac Snow Leopard Server 1tb £880

You’d be better of installing ubuntu 😆

Just to prove Cougar right

Sounds a bit geeky but I am quite into my hifi and windows does a better job than macs. (I am sure that will cause an argument….)

It has. If you’re quite into your hifi why the hell would you want to use a PC as the source, unless you’ve got a £500+ sound card and all your music is uncompressed

PC is actually quite a decent transport if you do it right.

It has. If you’re quite into your hifi why the hell would you want to use a PC as the source, unless you’ve got a £500+ sound card and all your music is uncompressed

Not quite £500 but its getting there a top end studio card would be pointless in my setup as I am running to an external DAC (Naim).

From my tests nothing really competes to a well put together PC as a digital source for the front end of a Hifi. I put my up against a Nain Unitiserve (£2k audio streamer/ripper) and it sounded better to everyone including the shop owner. I was surprised myself as I had convinced myself I wanted the Unitiserve.

there are loads of reasons to use a PC as a hifi source – not using a CD drive with all of its problems (jitter, real time error correction).

Plus there are compression formats (FLAC for example) that are lossless.

You can also use pro standard hardware to give you a standard that you would pay an arm and a leg for as consumer hifi. Such as the Lavry or Benchmark DACs, or the Lynx soundcards.

You can also run software such as

http://www.acourate.com/

You’d be better of installing ubuntu

(-:

In honesty, what’s Linux like from a media server point of view? Can’t say as I’ve ever looked into that side of it. I’ve played with the Mac’s media sharing (which, credit where it’s due, rocks) and several variants of Windows, but I’ve never seen Linux running as a media platform.

I’m considering trying to hack my media hub thing now.

I have a Siemens Scaleo WHS, saved my bacon numerous times. Backs up 2 PC and 4 laptops and other files.

I have lost Hard drives before with important stuff on them. WHS provides a means of saving images of every PC. Complete restore of a PC in a couple of hours.

This might be of interest
http://www.wegotserved.com/

Ive got a DIY WHS system (old P4 / 4GB RAM / 4TB RAID-5), which serves up media to the Xbox, and various PCs/Laptops.

It’s sort of just a glorified NAS really, nothing particularly special about it, apart from perhaps the backup features.

As for Linux + Media, there’s quite a few projects around. MythTV springs to mind, as a front-end client (which can also server as a backend system) is very good.

Cheer guys – looks like I made the right choice – it’s sitting under my desk right now, cant wait to plug it in. Bloody bargain @ £199 too!

I’m considering trying to hack my media hub thing now.

Which one have you got Mols ?

I have hacked my Netgear Stora, its now running debian linux.

For £50 including a free 500G disk it was dead cheap and a lot lower power than the PC it replaces.

Cheer guys – looks like I made the right choice – it’s sitting under my desk right now, cant wait to plug it in. Bloody bargain @ £199 too!

Did you get it for £200 or was it £200 with a cash back deal ?

like here

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Acer_Aspire_easyStore_H340-L_Home_Server__98.T1EYZ.UBH/version.asp?refsource=LDfroogle

In honesty, what’s Linux like from a media server point of view? Can’t say as I’ve ever looked into that side of it. I’ve played with the Mac’s media sharing (which, credit where it’s due, rocks) and several variants of Windows, but I’ve never seen Linux running as a media platform.

It’s s’allright. The aforementioned Myth is nice for a media center.
Truth is any platform will do more or less anything an average user would want, the rest is just a religous argument/flame war waiting to happen, so I’d just use whatever you’re comfortable with.

No, £199 straight form the Buy Direct Ebay store

Buy Direct

Shiny.

I’ve had a HP Media Server for the best part of a year. No problems, streams all my media to my TV and Sound system over wife via the PS3. Also streams over the Interweb to my iPod.

Automatically backs up both my laptops as well. Has 2 TB of storage and upgradable to 17TB.

Does everthing I want it to.

Been thinking about a Sheevaplug or a Guruplug as a file/webserver or building a fanless Atom board with some discs, still at the read all the forums/web stage. Prob going to have to be a Linux distro of some sort.

Not so worried about throughput/transcoding but I want something with a low power draw and wherever it sits in the house that it is quiet.

My plan was to use my desktop PC as a server in the spare room, and use a media centre extender to view it. I hate vampire power drain though so I need to set up wake on lan, which means a wired connection, which means work!

Russell96 molgrips

I was the same had a quad core full on PC running all the time as a server and it was just too noisy and consumed way too much power.

I pre ordered a Guru plug and waited, but it was very late and then there were issues with over heating so I cancelled my order.

I then bought a Netgear Stora, which uses the same Marvel Arm based processor as the Guru, except its got room for 2 SATA disks in the box.

With a £4 serial cable you can get access to the bootloader and installing your own linux is prety easy. I bought mine for £49.99 including a 500gb hard drive offer (you have to send away for it though) OK you will want bigger disks but the 500gb is free 🙂

So now I have a Stora running debian.

Bazzer

All setup and working nicely!

bazzer

How loud/quiet is it?