Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: media, server | Themes: Networking
9. Pros, Cons and Reflections
Simplicity and ease of use are hallmarks of the HipServ environment, which makes a lot of media readily available to home and remote users, their PCs or Macs and any UPnP AV compatible player (including the Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3). For $200 or less, this is pretty potent and usable functionality. Of course, the LaCie Ethernet Disk mini – Home Edition’s capacity is forever capped at 500 GB, but that should be enough room for many family media libraries. But what this device does, it does well; it also makes working with media a total snap. For the money, it’s an extremely good value.
On the con side, the LaCie Ethernet Disk mini – Home Edition is considerably slower than the HP EX475 MediaSmart server: its top data transfer rates peaked at under 100 Mbps, whereas the HP managed aggregate rates at more than double that level on our GbE home network. It can’t be expanded like the HP unit can (with 1 TB drives in all drive cages and 1 TB drives on all available ports, it can handle a maximum of 9 TB of data), nor does it offer the full range of backup and restore options that the HP delivers, either—most particularly, a ready-to-run, bootable "bare metal restore" CD.
For us, working with the LaCie Ethernet Disk mini – Home Edition and its HipServ Home Server software was something of a treat. Once properly set up, it was easy and intuitive to manage our media library, and we were able to access and use its contents both locally and across the Internet with little or no difficulty. For families or serious media mavens seeking a simple, straightforward aggregation and management device—we especially liked the media search tool to help us find things—this device is worth checking into further.
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The author also refers to the Mediasmart as having RAID, which it doesn't. It uses a somewhat different system of spanning multiple disks and making them appear as a single drive, but will make critical files redundant on multiple drives if a user wants.
Sure, it's an expensive machine, but like anything, there are deals to be found if one looks for it.
Every network, large or small, needs to provide a backup of important data. The HP MediaSmart Server does this often forgotten task automatically, through its daily backup of Client PC’s and Duplicate Folders on the server. The LaCie Ethernet Disk mini – Home Edition does not provide this capability, because it is an NAS, not a true Server, as evidenced by its lack of hard disk expansion, file redundancy, and Network Health monitoring, etc.
The old adage, “You get what you pay for” is never more true than when you compare the HP MediaSmart Server to the LaCie Ethernet Disk mini – Home Edition! There is no comparison, and the price reflects that.