Upgrading my HP WHS MediaSmart EX495 to Windows Home Server 2011
Those of you who have been following our MissingRemote Podcast are familiar with the dilemma I have been facing for the last few months--do I dare take the plunge on my one and only Windows Home Server system, based off of an HP MediaSmart EX495, and upgrade to the new and "improved" WHS 2011? After much deliberation and non-stop harassment from, well everyone, I decided it was time. The process was not nearly as bad as I had anticipated but the results are certainly mixed. Obviously this upgrade is not supported by HP given that the EX495 is long since discontinued, but migrating it to WHS 2011 would hopefully be worth the upgrade.
This is not another how-to guide, but more a look at the experience. Unless I'm alone here, I imagine there are a lot of HP MediaSmart users out there pondering the exact same thing I have been. As such I will be focusing on the effort and results, and see if all this was worthwhile.
SYSTEM OVERVIEW
HP MediaSmart EX495 Windows Home Server System featuring:
- Intel Pentium Processor Dual Core 2.5 Ghz 64-bit
- 2GB DDR2 Memory
- 4 Hot-swappable Drive Bays with 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm Hard Drives
- Gigabit NIC
- Size: 9.88 inches x 5.5 inches x 9.75 inches
INSTALLATION
First let's look at what was necessary to get all this going:
- An HP MediaSmart EX495 which I had peaked out with 4 x 1.5tb Seagate hard drives (this process supposedly would work on previous generations as long as they have the minimum 2GB of RAM)
- A copy of Windows Home Server 2011 (thanks Technet)
- Teracopy - Used to copy and verify data over network (thanks @Ogre and @Techlifeweb)
- Either external hard drives or another system on the network with enough storage space
- USB Thumb Drive (at least 5GB) - I tried an external USB hard drive I had but the system refused to boot off it
- PATIENCE
There takes a lot of faith to do something like this given that there is no VGA display on the MediaSmart. Luckily I followed two fantastic guides from SeanDaniel and MediaSmartServer and between the two of them had no problems.
With 4 x 1.5TB of storage space, I was using approximately 2.5TB. That left a bit of a dilemma as to how I was going to transfer the data and to where--while I have external hard drives, none are big enough for the task. In the end I used a combination of methods. For one, I removed one of the 1.5TB drives from my storage pool since I had the space remaining, and I copied over as much as I could. For the remaining terabyte of data, I used the space I had on my main home theater PC. To manage the transfer I used Teracopy which allowed me to "test" and verify the transfer was good--it also lets you pause and resume, which is convenient.
Since there is no Drive Extender anymore, you only need one hard drive to install WHS2011, so I removed the additional 3 and let it do it's thing. Keep in mind, the big fuss about the removal of Drive Extender, is that if you have one type of media, say your MOVIES which take up more GB than you have available on a single drive, then you are forced to split them among two hard drives and then individually setup each network share, such as \\SERVER\MOVIES1 and \\SERVER\MOVIES2. This is quite different than with Drive Extender, where the data would just span across multiple disks if necessary, but your share would remain a single \\SERVER\MOVIES share. I’m fortunate to not have over 1.5TB of a single media content type, but this has bothered a ton of people. Even if I did though, since I use My Movies 4 to organize my collection it is irrelevant to me how many shares store my movies since the application automatically combines it all into its UI--Media Browser and most other media softwares work the same.
The original Windows Home Server installation was a big patchwork where it involved constant reboots and lots of infomration. I used to work for an OEM which sold Windows Home Server systems, so I am painfully familiar with the arduous process required to install the original version. I was pleasently surprised that the new WHS 2011 took just under 35 minutes start to finish--and this is on an HP EX495 system!
With 4 x 1.5TB of storage space, I was using approximately 2.5TB. That left a bit of a dilemma as to how I was going to transfer the data and to where--while I have external hard drives, none are big enough for the task. In the end I used a combination of methods. For one, I removed one of the 1.5TB drives from my storage pool since I had the space remaining, and I copied over as much as I could. For the remaining terabyte of data, I used the space I had on my main home theater PC. To manage the transfer I used Teracopy which allowed me to "test" and verify the transfer was good--it also lets you pause and resume, which is convenient.
Since there is no Drive Extender anymore, you only need one hard drive to install WHS2011, so I removed the additional 3 and let it do it's thing. Keep in mind, the big fuss about the removal of Drive Extender, is that if you have one type of media, say your MOVIES which take up more GB than you have available on a single drive, then you are forced to split them among two hard drives and then individually setup each network share, such as \\SERVER\MOVIES1 and \\SERVER\MOVIES2. This is quite different than with Drive Extender, where the data would just span across multiple disks if necessary, but your share would remain a single \\SERVER\MOVIES share. I’m fortunate to not have over 1.5TB of a single media content type, but this has bothered a ton of people. Even if I did though, since I use My Movies 4 to organize my collection it is irrelevant to me how many shares store my movies since the application automatically combines it all into its UI--Media Browser and most other media softwares work the same.
The original Windows Home Server installation was a big patchwork where it involved constant reboots and lots of infomration. I used to work for an OEM which sold Windows Home Server systems, so I am painfully familiar with the arduous process required to install the original version. I was pleasently surprised that the new WHS 2011 took just under 35 minutes start to finish--and this is on an HP EX495 system!
UPDATE 4/28: When you install, you will have a yellow exclamation mark in Device Manager for a "Mass Storage Controller." You will need the 64-bit drivers for the SiliconImage 3531 Port Multiplier Chipset available here.
RESTORING DATA & SETUP
RESTORING DATA & SETUP
Now that I was up and running, it was time to get things back to functional, and fast (the GF would NOT be happy if I had to tell her we couldn't watch a movie because the server was down). The original backing up process took forever since the beauty that is Drive Extender has a big downside--file transfer speed crawls at around 10-30MB/s, in other words a LONG time for 2.5TB of data. While I do miss Drive Extender for a lot of reasons, I was very excited to see data transfer rates of 70-90MB/s! Also, without DE, the 1.5TB hard drive full of my backed up data was able to just be inserted into the system, and then I moved the WHS2011 folders to that location; since there's no need to copy the data over to a network share like before, this saved a TON of time. With that done, then it was just a matter of using Teracopy to pull the data back from my HTPC to the WHS.
The way WHS 2011 works is by simply sharing the folders wherever they are located; over your network this is irrelevant since \\SERVER\MUSIC does not care about your drive letter. Why is this so huge and important for me to dedicate a paragraph to it? Because it means NOT having to re-do all of my Windows 7 Media Center libraries at all--including music and My Movies library! As long as you maintain your user accounts and passwords, I was able to get things working immediately after copying things back. Now THAT was a welcome surprise.
What was not pleasant however was using the new WHS Connector software installing on my systems. It installed fine on my HTPC Windows 7 Ultimate x64, but it's now been two unsuccessful days on my Laptop's Windows 7 Ultimate x86. I continue trying to troubleshoot, but it's very frustrating as my error message is vague and not very helpful. I've read lots of posts online and the problems range from antivirus, to firewall to even simply enabling Windows Services for Media Center (yes, for WHS 2011, go figure). If I can't figure this out, no way my parents would be able to.
UPGRADE FRUSTRATIONS
The way WHS 2011 works is by simply sharing the folders wherever they are located; over your network this is irrelevant since \\SERVER\MUSIC does not care about your drive letter. Why is this so huge and important for me to dedicate a paragraph to it? Because it means NOT having to re-do all of my Windows 7 Media Center libraries at all--including music and My Movies library! As long as you maintain your user accounts and passwords, I was able to get things working immediately after copying things back. Now THAT was a welcome surprise.
What was not pleasant however was using the new WHS Connector software installing on my systems. It installed fine on my HTPC Windows 7 Ultimate x64, but it's now been two unsuccessful days on my Laptop's Windows 7 Ultimate x86. I continue trying to troubleshoot, but it's very frustrating as my error message is vague and not very helpful. I've read lots of posts online and the problems range from antivirus, to firewall to even simply enabling Windows Services for Media Center (yes, for WHS 2011, go figure). If I can't figure this out, no way my parents would be able to.
UPGRADE FRUSTRATIONS
So I'm up and running now for a day and things have definitely not been flawless. You really hate to say that about a brand new operating system over its predecessor, but MAN there were some crazy sacrifices made. I'll put it just like I see it--where the original Windows Home Server was really trying to be a server for any home, non-techy especially, I got the complete opposite vibe from WHS2011. And I'm not just talking about the lack of drive extender either. A perfect example is the shortcuts on the tray of the ServerManager and Powershell, which are two tools greatly utilized by people who actually manage servers, but unnecessary (I hope) in a WHS2011 world. And that's not all.
I consider myself a geek, but one of the things I loved to see was the simple pie chart showing my used vs available hard drive space, as well as a breakdown of what content is taking up how much storage space. Who doesn't like to brag about their 150GB music collection? Instead, all you see is "Free Space" available on the hard drive where that folder is located. Important information indeed, but still c'mon Microsoft, no pie chart, no total size.
I consider myself a geek, but one of the things I loved to see was the simple pie chart showing my used vs available hard drive space, as well as a breakdown of what content is taking up how much storage space. Who doesn't like to brag about their 150GB music collection? Instead, all you see is "Free Space" available on the hard drive where that folder is located. Important information indeed, but still c'mon Microsoft, no pie chart, no total size.
Most of my comments in this had been surrounding Windows Home Server 2011 in general, but of course the most important part about this is the fact that I'm using my old HP MediaSmart EX495 to USE WHS 2011, so how does it do? In general, very well. Remote desktop seems more responsive than before, bootup is very fast, and overall experience with the Windows 7-ish user interface is much nicer. However, since HP no longer supports it there is no software to run on it in order to enable the hard drive indication lights, so they remain dark. On top of that, the Health LED continuously blinks blue. For my setup, the system is tucked away so it does not distract me but I will probably put electrical tape over it shortly. No support for lights is one thing, but of course you have none of the HP WHS software which was enjoyed on the original, most notably in my case of the thermal and system monitoring tools.
FINAL THOUGHTS
FINAL THOUGHTS
It has only been a few days as of the time of this writing so it's tough to truly gauge a comparison of a brand new software with one I have been using for several years, but it's definitely NOT A NO BRAINER. In my situation I do not have any type of media over 1.5TB so the lack of Drive Extender while annoying, was not that devastating (especially with SyncToy to help create a mirrored copy), and even more so with the noticeable hard drive transfer speed that comes as a result.
But it's not all roses. My HP MediaSmart EX495 is rendered basically as a small chassis which I easily could have built myself. No lights, no software, none of the extras I had grown accustomed to. Minor quibbles sure, but you might be wondering if I had been better served just eBaying the EX495 and building my own higher performance SFF? Quite possibly, but at a current rate of approximately $300-500 that's not a lot of room to work for building a system; while the power draw I’m sure could be beaten (idle around 40-50 watts, and fully loaded hovering around 70-80W), there are not a lot of chassis which fit the small footprint and appearance of the HP EX495. Still something to consider if you are an existing EX495 owner.
That type of thought will have to wait for the future, as my system is fully up, running and functional right now so for fear of GF retaliation it will remain so for a bit. I miss a lot of things from the original WHS, which is not something you will usually say to an upgrade. While the speed benefit (of both RDP and network transfer) is awesome, I'm having a really difficult time seeing any obvious benefits.
But it's not all roses. My HP MediaSmart EX495 is rendered basically as a small chassis which I easily could have built myself. No lights, no software, none of the extras I had grown accustomed to. Minor quibbles sure, but you might be wondering if I had been better served just eBaying the EX495 and building my own higher performance SFF? Quite possibly, but at a current rate of approximately $300-500 that's not a lot of room to work for building a system; while the power draw I’m sure could be beaten (idle around 40-50 watts, and fully loaded hovering around 70-80W), there are not a lot of chassis which fit the small footprint and appearance of the HP EX495. Still something to consider if you are an existing EX495 owner.
That type of thought will have to wait for the future, as my system is fully up, running and functional right now so for fear of GF retaliation it will remain so for a bit. I miss a lot of things from the original WHS, which is not something you will usually say to an upgrade. While the speed benefit (of both RDP and network transfer) is awesome, I'm having a really difficult time seeing any obvious benefits.
Comments
6 years ago by George Schmauch...
I haven't exactly been subtle in my disdain for WhS 2011, but you definitely confirmed most of what I concluded, based on released information. First, this isn't a home server OS at all. Second, there's the question of why someone would use this OS over something else. I simply don't see the reason. Most people will probably be much happier with a regular Windows 7 install, due primarily to ease of use and familiarity. Those who want a more server oriented OS, will probably take a look at SBS 2011 Essentials.
I'm curious to see the price points between Windows 7, WHS 2011, and SBS 2011 Essentials. I believe the pricing will increase in the exact order I listed them, but MS won't be able to separate the price:feature argument enough for Windows 7 and WHS 2011 and people will just go with Windows 7.
Here's my prediction on what MS will soon say, "We've decided to discontinue development of WHS 2011, due to the lack of OEM support. We thought that delivering a compelling and unique product like WHS 2011 would garner the support of major OEMs. Sadly, that did not happen. While we understand there is a niche market for end-users in the DIY server community, it simply isn't enough to warrant its continued development."
Hey, maybe MS will actually be somewhat honest and say, "You know what? There really isn't much of a difference between WHS 2011 and SBS 2011 to warrant two separate products. To make it less confusing to consumers and enterprises, we are going to merge the two products."
Yeah... I'm a little bitter. 
6 years ago by Andrew Van Til...
What about automatic backups? That's all I use WHS for, and AFAIK not a feature included in any other product.
6 years ago by Aaron Ledger...
I'm not all that familiar with SBS, but does it allow remote desktop to all machines in the home and work with non-pro versions of Windows 7 including Home Premium? Does it have the media server functions of WHS 2011? Does it support WMC natively? Does it support HomeGroup?
For the features I find unique in WHS, there is no way Windows 7 alone is an adequate replacement. If SBS supports all of the "Home" features of WHS, then perhaps it is worth consideration although I can't imagine it is the same price-point as WHS.
6 years ago by George Schmauch...
I'm not all that familiar with SBS, but does it allow remote desktop to all machines in the home and work with non-pro versions of Windows 7 including Home Premium? Does it have the media server functions of WHS 2011? Does it support WMC natively? Does it support HomeGroup?
For the features I find unique in WHS, there is no way Windows 7 alone is an adequate replacement. If SBS supports all of the "Home" features of WHS, then perhaps it is worth consideration although I can't imagine it is the same price-point as WHS.
Can't answer much of that, since I'm not all that familiar with SBS either. But, as a SageTV user, I don't use any of the media functions from WHS. I know that SBS supports AD, so not sure about HomeGroup.
Also, is WMC really integrated natively into WHS 2011? So, you can record directly to the server now without having to move the files? I know that was a huge complaint by WMC users for WHS v1.
Maybe they should have renamed WHS 2011 to WMCS 2011 instead? 
6 years ago by George Schmauch...
MaximumPC turned me on to Macrium Reflect. While it may not be integrated into the OS itself, I'm fine with such a solution.
6 years ago by Andrew Van Til...
Is that automatic and can it provide file recovery (haven't needed to find out if WHS11 does, but WHS could)?
I need a solution that is easy and automated (dedup on the server is nice too), way too many PCs to manage anything manually.
6 years ago by George Schmauch...
Is that automatic and can it provide file recovery (haven't needed to find out if WHS11 does, but WHS could)?
I need a solution that is easy and automated (dedup on the server is nice too), way too many PCs to manage anything manually.
It is automatic, but the free version doesn't do file/folder recovery. For that, I use Cobian Backup (also free). I actually use that under WHS v1 because of what a pain it is to restore folders/files with WHS. And, since WHS v1 doesn't support server backups, it was my only option there for backing up my SageTV folder, my comskip folder, and a few others.
6 years ago by st3lvio...
Why is there no discussion of RAID for redundancy.
I've been doing some research over the past few months and find it a great solution. I just picked up a HighPoint 2680 controller (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115096) that I'll use to create a RAID5 array for all my DVD/Blu-rays. No need for a complete video duplication for something that's replaceable. (This got out of hand in v1) I look forward to the increased performance and better use of space.
I will backup my important files using WHS2011 server backup. And the client/server backups are completely automatic, so what's not to like?
Things I won't miss from WHS v1:
1) No control over what type of drive my data gets stored on (just part of 'the pool')
2) Demigrator.exe (http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/12/09/guide-shutting-off-demigrator...)
3) Very little options for client/server backups
4) Performance was far from my expectations in WHS v1
6 years ago by Josh Shenkle...
Why waste raid on DVD backups? Your disc "IS" the backup
now pictures and home videos on the other hand are a bit different.
-Josh
6 years ago by st3lvio...
Well, when 2TB drives are $79, having a bit of redundancy just makes sense in my case. My time is too valuable to liberate a movie off a Blu-ray twice. 
6 years ago by PLUCKYHD...
Andy,
It is my understanding from reading ms mircrosot that sbs 2011 includes automated backup of clients. I would use sbs over whs 2011 anyday.
I think you want essentials
It is my understanding it is the same backup mechanism in whs. I agree with Skirge whs 2011 is a joke at best.
6 years ago by Andrew Van Til...
Thanks, I'll take a look at that.
6 years ago by st3lvio...
"but still c'mon Microsoft, no pie chart, no total size."
Look here:
6 years ago by JROrtiz...
I'm going to be upgrading my server this weekend so it helps to know what to watch out for. My HTPC is an older VAIO TP which runs x86 because of driver compatibility so I'm really hoping I don't run into the connector issue.
Just a quick note: when the iPhone was initially released, there were no apps at all. It took a while for the app store to be setup and for it to grow. Regardless, I doubt we'll see the number of add-ins grow to a substantial number no matter how much time goes by.
6 years ago by Aaron Ledger...
Please let us know how it goes. BTW, it looks like another thing you may want to be aware of that Mike worked out is in this thread.
6 years ago by Aaron Ledger...
Mike, have you had a chance to try out the streaming media features in WHS 2011? I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on the feature.
6 years ago by oliverredfox...
Since you don't have raid on your system, you could always use spanned volumes to make all your drives treated as one. It's simple to set up, it lacks fault tolerance, but with proper backups it would let you go back to keeping all your data on one 'big drive'. (and you can always add more to your spanned volume anytime you want)
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