I while back I was planning on getting a streamer for playing movies, music etc. and my current storage is not enough to hold much content (i have an old 120 GB Tritton NAS, which in addition to being small, not upgradeable and slow, also has no easy means for backup and barely holds my music collection), so at the time I almost pulled the trigger on the Infrant Readynas X6. I pulled the plug on the project for a variety of reasons, but my AudioTron apparently just died and I now need to replace it and I now is as good a time as any to add video and upgrade my storage/backup situation.

I see that Infrant was just bought by Netgear, which I can't see as good news, and they also jacked up the price, which I see as worse news. In looking at the alternatives, the HP Mediasmart Server running WMS has me intrigued. It seems that the unit with 1 500 GB drive is priced about the same as the diskless Infrant before the takeover. As I understand it, unlike the Infrant there is no penalty for using different sized disks with HP unit. Seems to me a pretty nice advantage since you can upgrade your storage by swapping one drive at a time if needed and still maintain redundancy. From what I've read, the reviews seem favorable.

Anyone have some first hand experience with both? I am looking, first and foremost, for something easy to administer and use. Secondly, a server that will act as a true nas (i.e. no client side software needed) so that most any unit out there can pull media from the server (UPnP would be nice). Lastly I would like it to be relatively future proof. I am not looking to spend a fortune, but I don't mind spending a few extra bucks if I get a lot in return. I also don't mind giving up some features for the sake of simplicity and/or price, since I will probably only be using the unit to store and stream digital content and for backup purposes.

I appreciate any feedback that anyone here can share. Also, if there are other units out there that would fit the bill as well or better, I'd love to hear about them.

TIA

I looked into that HP unit and found it to be a little weird. It is not a true NAS unit because ti runs the Windows home server OS and actually requires more administration and can require odd configurations to use it. When I think of NAS I just want disk apce that I can connect to, not a complete server running Windows. There are some detaled reviews out there on this unit. I think tom's hardware has one.

- Chris

I have an NV+ and I can recommend it with certain caveats. The performance sucks for most CPU tasks, and it will never be a good general purpose box. That said as a NAS/Media player it works well, a the Slim/Squeeze web interface is unusable, but from Moose or the squeezebox, it's great. The v4 transition is still rocky, but I have faith it will work well in the long run. Xraid was a big selling point and not having to juggle raid expansion was big on my list.

As for the HP, the weirdest thing is the main drive is not swappable in the normal manner which is very unusual.

I've heard good things about Thecus, Iomega and D-link 323, but haven't used any of them.

I currently have the Infrant Readynas and was a beta tester for the WHS. They are tough to compare since while they can both hold media files they are generally targeted at different consumers.

The Infrant is essentially a networked raid5 system. This means if you add 4 1TB hard drives you will be able to store roughly 2.8 TB worth of data with single drive failure protection. If you loose 2 drives you will loose all of your data. It has several build in media servers and supports FTP and HTTP servers.

The windows home server is a version of Server 2000 (Small Business Edition) with a special file system. WHS uses file replication to secure your data. Every file on each drive will also be located on one of the other drives. This means if you add 4 1TB hard drives you will be able to store roughly 1.8 TB worth of data with single drive failure protection. If a second drive fails then you will loose data, but not all of your data. Unfortunately how the data is stored and replicated is completely under the control of WHS. Additionally, while it is easy to recover from a single drive failure it is very difficult to recover your data from a multiple drive failure. The nice thing about WHS is that it is a copy of windows server so you can hook up a keyboard and mouse, logon and install virtually any media server or service you want. It also has the ability to incrementally backup all of the PC’s on your network. Since it is running on a standard PC it generally draws more power then a box like the Infrant. The WHS OS can also be purchased from places like newegg and install on a home built server.

....Every file on each drive will also be located on one of the other drives. This means if you add 4 1TB hard drives you will be able to store roughly 1.8 TB worth of data with single drive failure protection.

Wow, that's a lot of overhead. I did not realize that it took more than half of your drive space to protect against single drive failure. Not much difference from having 2 drives mirroring one another.

I have the HP MediaSmart EX470.

You install the WHS client software on your PCs and the HP EX470 does daily backups on all your computers. WHS does this very efficiently, by only backing up files that changed since the last backup. You can browse backups and older images at any time, very much like OSX's "Time Machine" without the pretty UI. [Apple's Leopard took this WHS functionality and put a pretty UI on it.] If you need a full system restore, you simply boot your PC with the bundled CD and it restores the backup you choose over the network.

You can create shared folders for each user, map them to a drive on your desktop, and access them over the web (with login and password) thanks to the built-in webserver at <whatever you choose>.homeserver.com. With a plug-in, you can remotely turn on/off any of your Windows computers from this web site. Once you've turned a computer on, you can connect to it with Remote Desktop just by clicking the icon for the computer on your homeserver.com web page. [Of course, you set what you will and won't allow over the Internet on a PC-by-PC basis.]

Another nice thing about the HP MediaSmart server -- as compared to other NAS devices-- is that it can run virtually any Windows program. There are a number of free third-party add-ons (http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/windows-home-server-add-ins/) as well. If you have a Squeezebox, the HP will run Slimserver. If you have a $199 SageTV HD Extender (http://brentevans.blogspot.com/2007/12/sagetv-hd-extender-stx-hd100-review.html), there is a WHS version of the SageTV server software that will let your HP do all your high-definition recording using a HDHomerun, eliminating the need for a separate HTPC.

As far as performance, how does 60Mbps sound? With a single drive, the HP decimates the Infrant Readynas in terms of throughput, thanks to its low-power AMD Sempron 3400+ CPU. Unfortunately, performance decreases dramatically with every new drive you add, because WHS duplicates the file across the other drives on the fly. I was able to improve performance by enabling jumbo frames (disabled by default) and upgrading the memory from 512Mb to 2Gb, thanks to these instructions (http://www.homeserverhacks.com/).

If you buy the HP, I would strongly recommend the 2Gb memory upgrade. I used this 2Gb DDR2-667 module (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231119) with 4-4-4 latency from Newegg.

I own an Infrant and use it to serve movies, music and photographs. The main limitation that the box has is in it's horsepower. It just doesn't have a cpu that can do transcoding. Music is really not a problem, but video and pictures can be. I use a DLink DSm-520, which can handle VOB's and AVI's. Since the DLink handles these formats natively, and I am ripping my own DVD's I don't have an issue. However other's have reported issues with other file types. Pictures are a problem though because they need to be scaled to fit full screen and the Infrant just doesn't have a good built in nonlinear scaler. There are a couple of workarounds. You can serve from TVersity on your PC, or you can use Photoshop elements to create a slide show in WMV format. The latter plays well, but the transcoding on my PC took a couple of hours for 135 slides. Another option might be to scale all your pictures prior to sending them to the infrant. Haven't tried that yet.

Alan

The HP has a 35W Sempron 3400+ @ 1.8GHz. At least one person tried to upgrade the built-in CPU with a dual-core 45W Athlon X2 BE-2400 @ 2.3Ghz, but it didn't work.

It's still possible that a 45W Athlon64 LE-1620 @ 2.4GHz will work, but that's untested.

Wow, that's a lot of overhead. I did not realize that it took more than half of your drive space to protect against single drive failure. Not much difference from having 2 drives mirroring one another.If it's just storage you're after, a NAS is simpler & cheaper.

WHS' big advantages are for backup & disaster recovery in a multi-PC household. For this scenario, it's more efficient than simple mirroring - consider that most of your PCs contain gigabytes of nearly-identical files (Windows, apps, some media, etc). WHS will backup (and mirror) just one copy of every unique file across all your PCs. Also, having every PC in the house automaticaly backed up every night, and being able to restore a file (or entire system image) to a previous state after something happens (eg virus) sounds great.

I had both Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ and HP EX470. Like others have said, each had its advantages/disadvantages. Both are to be configured using PC (you could not hook up input/monitoring devices to HP EX470). I am still experimenting of streaming HD videos with the cheap PopcornHour A-100 (wireless bridge, results are somewhat acceptable for the price) from them and wondering should I get a D-Link DAP-1555 HD wireless bridge or SageTV HDX-HD100 media extender? Any idea?

I am still experimenting of streaming HD videos with the cheap PopcornHour A-100 (wireless bridge, results are somewhat acceptable for the price) from them and wondering should I get a D-Link DAP-1555 HD wireless bridge or SageTV HDX-HD100 media extender? Any idea?With the SageTV HD extender, you will need the WHS version of their server software to install on your HP.

SageTV said they would have a bundle with the HDX-HD100 extender (normally $199) and server software (normally $79) for $249 total. Unfortunately the HDX-HD100 is out of stuck until late January or early February. You can sign up to be notified when it is back in stock.

If you intend to install SageTV server on your HP, you'll also want to do that RAM upgrade. The stock 512Mb isn't going to cut it.

If you are open to a direct attached solution, I can recommend the Drobo. It has been great for me.

- Eddie

I had the NV+ for about a year and recently replaced it with the EX470. I'll echo what most are saying, each has its pros and cons. The Infrant worked fine for both streaming music to my SqueezeBox (from SlimServer, Rhapsody, iTunes or FLAC files ripped to the NAS) and video to an MG-35. I switched out because I found the Infrant to be a bit "tech-y"; if you're looking for something easy to use, my vote would be the HP (except that you do have a User structure because of the WHS). On the other hand I don't think the HP has true RAID capabilities, but it has certain nice, "consumer" features like the automatic back-up someone mentioned, media streaming, web photo-sharing, etc.

CD

I'm confused by your expectations of a NAS device such as the Infrant ReadyNAS NV+. This is a file server / network attached storage device. Scaling of video and photos is not something native to a device such as this so not sure it is a downside. The device, along with its most recent firmware update support a number of methods of streaming, including UPnP, Home Streaming, Squeezebox, Twonkyvision plug-in, etc. It also supports FTP server, HTTP, HTTPS, iTunes Streaming server, Home Media Streaming server for networked streamers and networked DVD players, VLAN support, DHCP services and quite a bit more. They have also added direct support for the recent Xbox360 fall '07 update.

WHS is a different animal. Its a server with Windows Server 2003 underneath it, support for any storage device you want to throw at it (USB, SATA, etc.), can backup your PCs on a scheduled basis with an installed client, etc. It does have other advantages as well ..

It really depends on the needs.

I would agree the CPU doesn't have as much horsepower as it should but as a storage device
I own an Infrant and use it to serve movies, music and photographs. The main limitation that the box has is in it's horsepower. It just doesn't have a cpu that can do transcoding. Music is really not a problem, but video and pictures can be. I use a DLink DSm-520, which can handle VOB's and AVI's. Since the DLink handles these formats natively, and I am ripping my own DVD's I don't have an issue. However other's have reported issues with other file types. Pictures are a problem though because they need to be scaled to fit full screen and the Infrant just doesn't have a good built in nonlinear scaler. There are a couple of workarounds. You can serve from TVersity on your PC, or you can use Photoshop elements to create a slide show in WMV format. The latter plays well, but the transcoding on my PC took a couple of hours for 135 slides. Another option might be to scale all your pictures prior to sending them to the infrant. Haven't tried that yet.

Alan