Computer Sales Store – Workstation Computers and Desktops

With iPods and hard-disk video players appear in homes, ordinary consumers want cheap reliable storage they can share – in short, the consumer SAN. The good news is that we can all convenient use of storage in business too. Last year, Netgear launched a promising product – a case that two IDE drives – but we eventually found the SC101 is not reliable enough for business. This year, D-Link DNS-323 storage enclosure seem, but it’s very different.

The DNS-323 is a two-bay enclosure, the size and shape of a toaster. It takes SATA drives, which slide in and meet connections, without tools or cables to plug in. It connects to an available Ethernet port, using Gigabit Ethernet.

The box has a very quiet fan, so there should be no concerns with overheating. With two drives connected, it is unobtrusive. Four LEDs show power, network and activity on the two disks. The front panel slides out easily and is preventing access to drive bays – which we popped two 250 GB Seagate drives.

The CD contains a small program, the Easy Search Utility to find an aircraft, gives her status and open a web page to configure. The box itself runs on Linux (D-Link included a copy of the GPL) and we attached to a Windows XP machine. It can also be used with Max and Linux systems.

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The first step is asked with four options: a large linear disk (JBOD – just a bunch of disks), two separate disks or RAID (mirrored or striped). We chose mirrored RAID, and then face a choice between style – EXT2 or EXT3 for stability performance. After selecting the size of the RAID disk, the rest of the two discs is a JBOD drive.

Then the DNS box formats of the stations, and restarted the admin pages good. The next step is a tool that requires a password to add, and provides changes to the IP address and network name, then reboot again. The drives easily through the Search Utility, and appear as network drives.

That’s really all there is. There is an “Advanced” tab on the web management pages, which allows groups to set up users and passwords (put them in that order, if you can not return to a user group membership editing). This provides a reasonable level of security, for the kind of files that could be stored on a portable device.

The product contains a full version of Memeo backup (no 30-day trial). It provides a simple interface to select files, and choose a destination to back them up. During the selection process, scans the size of the files to a backup, to ensure that sufficient space. Memeo does not allow much flexibility, but can not be criticized on ease of use. A good feature for a home user, but a business user need an audit trail could use (and perhaps all) different backup software.

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One of the advantages of SATA drives is hot-pluggable ports. We gave it a quick check, by ejecting one of the stations (there is a lever on the back), while the box was. The mirrored drive remained available, while the JBOD drive disappeared.

JBOD drive re-appeared when the box was powered, the drive replaced and the box restarts. Obviously, hot-pluggable device is what it is attended to (if you work with something as critical can not be disabled on a disk, then run it on something else). This amounted to a check that the mirroring our data safe if one drive “failed” was held.

The drives read and write with a speed comparable to a local hard disk. We were not able to get something to Gigabit speeds, due to restrictions on the rest of our network. Other reviewers have found that when the rest of the network updating, the device will happily write and read data faster than 100 Mbit/s.

Like this, there is a USB port for sharing a printer, and built in iTunes server, media files, FTP and the like. With a printer connected to the USB port, it was easy to find it and add it to our system. The other servers also did what they should do. Applying a USB printer was painless – the box indicated a Dell color printer and put his name in the status page immediately, and our Windows PC, then took it right away. The USB port only supports printers, that’s a lost opportunity – it would have been useful to be able to plug USB storage here occasionally.

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The management screen allows several other functions, including e-mail alerts when the tank is full, or other points, such as when the temperature is high (the status screen tells you the temperature – usually about the same as my own healthy 98 C)

Conclusion

SATA for reliability, standard SMB file protocols, cooling and sound management software, which wipe out an unhappy memories of the Netgear SC101. With support for Mac and Linux, it can find its way into many small office networks. It does its job quite happily. Really critical backup to somewhere else, if only because this is a small portable – and highly desirable – box, and someone could decide not to run with it.

For those of us who ever field a petite home or office, we know the primary importance of a good server. Inadequate server configuration acts as a huge bottleneck and can cripple your productivity and bring down your entire network.

Server choices are rarely cheap, and those that do not meet your specific requirements. Instead of this, let’s see if the newest competitor in the series of HP MediaSmart WHS (Windows Home Server), the EX490, makes it to break.

The WHS is actually a normal PC, except that the specs are fleshy, and it runs a modified version of the Windows OS. The EX490 is considered a back-up media, music and videos from all computers in your network, as long as they remain accessible on the network. The station also acts as a server for your iTunes and UPnP (Universal Plug n ‘Play).

All media stored on the EX490 can be accessed from a PC that is connected to a network. For example, you can stream video from your server using a remote PC. Although the use of this feature must first encode the videos in a low-resolution MPEG-4. This is a bit of a chore on the EX490, especially given the 2.2 GHz Celeron processor core is not exactly top of the line.

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It also has the standard features of a server, such as sharing printers over a network, and backup tasks. Backups can be scheduled for when you feel the need to backup data on the computers on your network. A slight glitch in this feature is that you do not back up individual computers on a schedule. File versioning is supported, and if in case you need to return to a previous version of a file, you can do so using the backup version.

Sharing photo albums is very intuitive treated with the EX490, which in addition to the photos as accessible over the network, they can be automatically uploaded to an online photo-sharing service like Picasa or Flickr.

Disk is enough for a small network, with a 1 TB hard drive, along with three additional disk trays, to add additional drives if needed. Copying files is rather like a flash, and even RAID arrays are not supported, provided there is an alternative, namely, the directory replication.

Setting up the EX490 is a breeze, and the configuration is pretty much obvious for the standard functions. Additionally, if you want a torrent downloads, or position of an FTP server to perform, there are options available for those too.

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Very easy to assign, the EX490 WHS is one of the best systems in the market today. It has some great features, and although some of these can rarely be used, it offers great value for money, even at its above average point tag. It is not a high-performance server-based, and for those who want something on those lines, there are other offers on the market. However, for its particular feature set, and it is the relative ease of use, the HP MediaSmart EX490 is an excellent product and an easy to recommend.

HP for the first time in their MediaSmart Server line of computers with Microsoft Windows Home Server a few years ago, and since then they have been slowly upgrading and adding new features every few months and release a new model. The latest model, the HP MediaSmart EX495 offer speed boosts through hardware upgrades and better networking support. HP also changed the user interface of the administration panel to make things more accessible by the user.

The HP MediaSmart EX495 looks the same as the previous MediaSmart Home Server models with the black mini-tower with a “server-like” feeling, because the grill case. On the front at the bottom are the LED status lights, and a lone USB port, which is still there and the back is home to a few inputs, which remain unchanged. You get an eSATA port, three USB ports and an Ethernet network connection. As before, the MediaSmart Home Server are not compatible Wi-made for speed and reliability, they must be connected to your home network via Ethernet cable (CAT 5/5e and CAT 6).

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But inside, the MediaSmart EX495 has appreciated significantly over past models. HP has shifted from the older and slower Intel Celeron processors, and now a dual-core Intel Pentium E5200 (64-bit, 2.5 GHz). They also come with 2 GB of DDR2 RAM and a 1.5 TB SATA 7200rpm hard drive for virtually infinite storage. There are also three available drive bays for extra storage when you need it, with each drive shaft with tool-less chassis. Overall, the device measures 5.5″ x 9.8″ x 9.2″, which is perfect for the reaction in a well ventilated cabinet or under a desk.

EX495-up of the first, and if he up was extremely easy and like the previous models. Just like before, it does not have video output and keyboard/mouse ports, it means to be a “headless” computer and you never have to interact directly with her. to use everything from setup configuration is done through your other computers with the same home network (either Ethernet or wireless). During installation, you can choose how and when you want to backup other computers on your home network and what files, if at all exclude from their backups.

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Once set, the HP software for the home server very easy to use and allows you to customize many aspects of the device and many of its functions from a surface. One of the most useful features is Remote Access, which you connect to your home server from anywhere in the world via the Internet and allows access to your files. First, you need to set up remote access settings and acquire a domain name used. HP offers two options for a one year free “yourname.hphome.com” domain or a life free Windows Live domain name yourname.homeserver.com.

We recommend them because they always free and is running Microsoft. While this is a very handy feature to have, it can be very difficult to setup if you do not have a router or popular one of several other factors. If you have a popular and supported router, it automatically configure your router port forwarding features UPnP, but if your router supports UPnP, you must follow the Microsoft directions, such as port forwarding the required ports to your home server.

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HP has a new video-converter, EX495 home server, that you do not contain protected video and audio (including non-protected discs in the connected computer) in other media formats directly to convert from the home server. The converter supports MP3, MOV, FLV, DIVX, and a few others.

Apart from that, many of the functions remain the same and they all work pretty well, with only occasional hiccups, which is easily fixed by restarting the home server. The hardware bump that HP gave this model is definitely well worth the money and the upgrade if you currently have one of the older HP home server, or are looking for an easy way to backup your home computer network and provide access to file storage for your network.

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