I am not sure how I really got into wanting to get a
Windows Home Server machine at home. I think I first started looking at this because I found out about the HP MediaSmart machines. At some point I considered "making my own" WHS machine. But then I ended up going with the value added HP MediaSmart. After a few weeks of using it I can say I am happy I made my choice. But I don't want to get ahead of myself.
First to be accurate, what I got from HP was their DataVault which is pretty much the same thing as the MediaSmart, but rebranded for SOHO use. There was a deal on it and I went for the $50 off.
So what is the value add that I liked with the HP? One, there is a plugin called the media collector that HP provides. This plugin has a client piece that runs on my laptops and other machines (clients) and basically does what it says. It collects my photos, videos, and music from all my machines and stores them on the server. That's "exactly" what I wanted to achieve with this setup. That's the problem I wanted to solve. I wanted to consolidate my photos (movies and music was incidental), and I wanted to have a backup copy. And this did it. By magic. I plugged in the server, "attached" my machines to it, set up the media collector, and it did it all. Like in a couple of days I had my 15K plus photos and other media all sorted and organized on my server.
That's it! Without this add on, the WHS would not have been "the" solution I was looking for. Yes I could have used it to achieve this manually. But the HP plugin did it for me. And it did it well. I was happy.
But the journey didn't end there. It was just the beginning. Stay tuned.