Many people today need a larger drive to store all their music, photo albums, general files and other useful parts of information that are stored in various folders on the computer. With the addition of the home server, it because possible to remotely store all the files on one machine, and have the ability to download them on another. The ability to share files and folders has long been a useful tool in the world of the integrated network of social status updates, and the MediaSmart Server from Microsoft is no exception. Although late to come on the market, there was very little by way of usual problems, and this helps immensely when you are looking for a reliable and sturdy model for storage.

The MediaSmart can be purchased in two denominations. The cheaper device, the EX470 will cost you $600 for 500GB hard drive and three drive bays. The EX475 on the other hand, shows how two 500GB drives and empty drive bays can be fitted into an AMD Sempron processor, and work effectively with just 512MB of RAM. The models are exceptionally sleek and wonderful, and housing an eSATA point as well as an Ethernet port and four USB ports, you are likely to not want for anything.

Of course, this is rather a little on the high side. However, it is more designed for a kit within a household that has more than one computer connected to it in order to minimize the set up and usage of the server. This could not be easier. As the plug and play options mean that simply connecting the device to a router and running the installation options will allow you to start networking straight away, there is an automatic wizard that creates many folders that you can sort out all of your things that you’d wished had a place, and now it has.

The device is not without problems of course. The server may remind you of Vista, and there are serious problems with the remote accessing feature from the automatic configuration. You may be required to manually set them up, which requires less urgency and much more care. This goes into the warnings that each folder should be password protected with the users that are on the machines, to prevent fraudulent claims being made about files taken from where they are. The Console can be used these for many things, but there has been a charge given to remotely view files from other machines. It is free for the first year, but it can be a little pricier thereafter.

Despite this, and given the fact that the backup feature worked wonderfully when asked to perform scheduled tasks, or the performance of daily tasks worked when working with other machines such as the Mac OS, the Home Server proved to be a warm and welcoming praise upon entering. The expense, however, is not something that is a good thing, even though there are only a few on the market.