Anyone have one of the HP MediaSmart WHS servers?

[Bateluer]

Currently, my main machine has full tower Lian Li case, with gobs of 3.5in and 5.25 bays. It takes up a lot of space, its heavy, but very nice to work in. When I do my rebuild my main desktop sometime next year, I've been thinking of just building it around a smaller mid-tower case. The catch, is that I don't want to sacrifice all the storage space that I currently have, 2x500GB, 2x1TBs, 2x300GB hard drives.

I've been debating purchasing one of the HP MediaSmart WHS systems, specifically the EX490, and replacing its 1TB drive with several 2TB drives. This would give ample space as well as integrate with my other devices easily, including a future TV system.

Now, I had good experience with WHS evaluation on one of my Inspiron 531 test machines. I would use one of those machines, but they only have 2 hdd bays.

It'd be nice to have a WHS system on my network to house my media collection.

Anyone have experience with these systems?

 

[RebateMonger]

I don't personally OWN an HP MediaSmart server, but I've installed them and "managed" them at several offices. So far, they've been completely reliable and with zero problems. The ones I installed were all the original version (EX475).

Remember that, like any other file server, keeping a single copy of important files is not recommended. WHS has folder redundancy (writing important files to two different disks) as an option, or you can back up your important files elsewhere. Personally, I prefer backups. WHS' redundancy method should minimize the chances of losing data due to a failed disk, but redundancy (whether it be WHS' version or the various redundant RAID versions) won't help if you accidentally erase or overwrite files, nor if your server gets stolen.