HP MediaSmart Server EX490

Home backup goes large

The server is connected to your network using Gigabit Ethernet. Installing and configuring the MediaSmart Server EX490 is a bit of a challenge and takes a long time. A Windows computer is mandatory for the initial setup because it involves installing Microsoft Windows Home Server - Mac users take note. Once this has been done, you can add Windows and Mac clients without restriction.

Windows Home Server is useful and yet strangely unhelpful when problems arise
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That said, after completing this review, I reset the server and tried to configure it from scratch using an iMac running Windows 7 64-bit in Boot Camp. It worked perfectly, but I stress that HP does not officially support it.

Full marks to HP for providing a practical, screenshot-filled, 331-page user guide (as a PDF), without which most buyers would be completely lost. It even explains how to reconfigure a variety of third-party firewalls, antivirus programs and routers if things aren't working as they should. I honestly can't praise HP highly enough for taking the trouble of this: most other NAS manufacturers leave you with a black-and-white 24-page leaflet written in Japlish.

HP explains in its guide in great depth how you can maintain libraries of photos, music and video files on the server so that they can be accessed from any computer on the network or served up to home entertainment media players. This was so easy, it practically configured itself and I was able to watch movies through my Playstation 3 (delivered by WiFi across my wireless router) within a few minutes.

The server can be accessed from any of your computers using a web browser.

Getting the on-line delivery features to work was more difficult, and it took me some time to configure connections to Facebook, Flickr and so on. Setting up remote access – that is, accessing the server from anywhere on the Internet – was a complete nightmare using Windows Home Server, but I got there in the end.