Comments on: HP MediaSmart Server: Time Machine Fine Print

By: Dobi

Dobi — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:29:33 +0000

What a sad story!!! I totally understand what you went through. My external HDD was once damaged but luckily I was using SafeCopy backup (www.safecopybackup.com). Which really saved my life. It’s easy to use, I can even backup my external HDD and my USB now as well. I can also share files over 1GB easily.

Plus I can use one account for all my computers. And has many more functionality that I couldn’t find on other online backup providers. Give it a try, it’s Great!

By: Billy Coover

Billy Coover — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:58:31 +0000

Great discussion folks. I’m glad I read this story and all your feedback. I’m buying a EX487 right now. I have a Mac and three PC’s at the house, plus I suspect I’ll be assisting the in-laws with backups to my server as well. I’ll make sure I have backups of backups before I start messing around with this thing. I’m a programmer; never messed much with hardware. Crossing my fingers…

By: Christopher Price

Christopher Price — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:51:50 +0000

Part of the problem is Apple itself. If they would fix bugs with Samba, enabling flawless Time Machine backups from the Restore Assistant… it wouldn’t be an issue.

Still, as I noted in the article you linked, there is a simple workaround that we’ve found. By moving the .sparseimage backup from the MediaSmart server to a Mac-formatted hard drive, you can use the Restore Assistant to get a full restore completed.

The data is all on your MediaSmart server, you just need a man-in-the-middle (a Mac-format USB drive) to get the job done.

By: Scott Dier

Scott Dier — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:43:25 +0000

Time for hackintosh + atom box. Set everything to time machine back to that. Then I just run itivo/pytivox/twonky for all my media serving goodness. itivo’s been dumping into dropbox so when im at work I can just drag and drop some video to my phone before heading home on the bus!

By: Stephen

Stephen — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:40:33 +0000

Dave, been having an issue with my EX485 and my Macs as well. My problem is I get a full (well as far as HP is concerned) backup via TM, however, it works two or three times, then my target backup disk goes missing, which means a purge of the backup data and a reinstall of the HP software and a fresh backup restart. Been on with HP support and they are confused…

Now contemplating a separate Time Capsule for the Mac and leaving the Windows machines on WHS. Not optimal and really makes me wish I had not bought two EX485’s on the same day (one for work and one for home), given both are on mixed OS environments and missing the Time Machine portion really take a significant amount of the value out of the equation for me. Honestly never saw the fine print until you pointed out the TM integration…

I will say the sharing features and iTunes server options are nice — great having all computers music libraries and the Sonos all running from the EX485, which wouldn’t work well my previous NAS. Still $550 plus 3 1.5TB drives is a lot of money for a music and video server that only backs up half of my machines in an appropriate manner.

Next step installing TTG so I can centralize the Tivo content — although with TWC flagging as many channels as they do, not sure I will get much bang for my buck from that and i won’t even go on my rant about the Cisco Tuning Adapters for SDV…but that’s a whole different post.

P.S. – the new HP firmware with better TM integration is not live yet, just announced (at least it wasn’t as of this morning when I checked)

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:26:02 +0000

Greg, I’ve got several pals who swear by WHS. But I didn’t manage to set much up. My immediate goal was to get it up, take some snapshopts, and then hit the road. The ultimate goals had been to backup all our computers, centralize my iTunes (not Melissa’s), and then I was going to run some SageTV experiments to see if I could use it as the hub of a whole-home DVR. I wasn’t planning on opening ports for remote access. There’s a certain amount of convenience in doing so, but Windows machines on the Internet are also nice targets.

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:42:27 +0000

So how did it work with Windows? I have been looking at this for a while, but I am unsure if this is the route I want to go. I am not a Mac user so hopefully the integration with a Windows machine is much smoother. Currently, I am just using a western Digital World Book to access my media on any PC in my house but I am thinking this would make things easier and more expandable.

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:19:25 +0000

JVo, yep my Windows partition killed the drive. And the perceived safety of a separate partition is specifically why I was using Boot Camp versus running a VM in Parallels or Fusion (both of which I own). Basically, I think when Vista went down there was hard drive data corruption that prevented the system from rebooting into an OS. Formatting the drive and reinstalling the OS cleared it up, so I don’t think it’s a physical problem with the drive. I’ve never experienced this particular issue before, and I’ve been running Boot Camp since the beta days. (I saw one similar report yesterday on the Apple support forums.) But I have seen blue screens kill Windows installs on many occasions.

jon, tivoboy, Will be interested to see if the upgrade includes real Time Machine support. Although I’m pretty skittish at the moment and headed out on an 8 day business trip. (Which is why I raced to recover. Of our multiple computers, this 13″ Macbook is my fave.)

Ben, I didn’t make any partition changes or install anything new other than HP’s software – have been running that Vista partition at least three months. I do agree I was negligent in not having a more recent backup than that February one. Which is why I had bought this thing.