MacandPcStore.com

Decent enough for the price

Customer Rating:
I have been waiting years for something like this to come along. I have tried in numerous other ways to replicate what this machine does to no avail. Overall, I would say I am happy with this Server. With that said....
Wow, this thing is complicated. Not for the faint of heart at all to try to set up. That last guy with the 20 page infomercial is mostly right. I followed his pointers(mostly) and had mixed sucess. This server is just so difficult to set up. I'm happy enough now that I have it up and running, but to get to that point I feel is just way too difficult.
Basically what I wanted to do was backup my Audio collection (700 Gig's), My Video collection (1.2 TB) and mixed personal stuff. Then be able to stream it all to my various devices. Oh, I run it through a switch into a Wireless router also. Once it was set up and running viewing my content on my laptop was fine. Decent bandwith, no real discernable lag, good enough for viewing.
Adding content to it is also difficult. Why won't it let you just drag and drop? It seems like you need to follow some unneccessary steps just to transfer your Data into it. Also, it does seem to operate in a limited Raid array. I believe someone on one of the other post's said it doesn't. But it seems like if you check the box to duplicate your files it makes 2 copies. So, I guess in a way that is a basic RAID function?
Overall, I am happy with the product. I had some experience with Windows Server 2003 and so I wasn't completely lost. If you don't mind trouble shooting for yourself and have more than average computer knowledge this is a good buy. If you're an "I just wanted to check my email", or if you can't trouble shoot a BSOD by yourself I SERIOUSLY recommend you think twice about this purchase.

Very useful, but with some caveats

Customer Rating:
[update at end of review]

I work at home and have several computers on an internal network, all of which need backing up on a regular basis. I purchased this server in hopes of it providing a solution. It now does, but only after a few bumps along the way. I can recommend this server conditionally, with the cautions described below.

Since the computers that need to be backed up all have large hard drives themselves (600 GB to 1 TB), I purchased three additional 2 TB SATA hard drives (Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS) and installed them. I soon started having heat problems with the server (68 to 70 degrees C). I solved them with a small $15 fan from Walmart, which simply blows constantly on the 'mesh' side of the server. But a server designed to hold four SATA drives shouldn't overheat when you put four drives in it; this is the principal factor behind the 3-star rating.

I had some software/network configuration problems with the server and was unclear how to solve them. I then bought Microsoft Windows Home Server Unleashed (2nd Edition), which I strongly recommend; Chapter 1 alone was worth the price of the book. I restored the server itself via its accompanying CD, followed a few of the suggestions in McFedries' book, and things have worked mostly smoothly since then (as smoothly as anything involving Microsoft networking can run). I do have occasional problems; for example, there are times when I'll be able to log into the server via one of my systems using Remote Desktop Connection, yet if I try to log into the server from the same computer using the Windows Home Server Console, I get an error message. But it's unclear what's to blame for that, so I'll just leave it as a caveat.

One last recommendation: when installing the client software on my systems, I ran into problems where it either couldn't find the server on the network, or -- having found it -- failed while trying to download the client software from the server. Turns out the problem was my firewall/antivirus software; once I turned it off, downloading the client software went just fine (and, of course, I turned the FW/AV software back on afterward).

The initial backup of five systems took the better part of a day, but now the server does incremental backups each night, which is a tremendous load off my mind. My systems are all either Win7 or WinXP; however, my wife has a Macbook and a MacPro, both on the network as well, and she can 'see' the server. Besides the backups, I plan to use the server as a central repository for photos, music, etc., and will probably see how usable it is as a central iTunes server. I may update this review based on how those efforts go.

All in all, a very useful device. For a bit over $800, I have a central server with automated backup of all my system and nearly 8 TB of storage. I'd be happier if it had 4 GB of RAM instead of just 2 GB, but since it runs very little software beyond Windows Home Server itself, I'm not sure it really needs much more. Your mileage may vary. ..bruce..

UPDATE: 08/28/2010.

After getting the temperature problem handled, I kept having problems with network stability with the cube -- some systems would talk with it, others wouldn't; reboots would help, but the problems would arise again and were slowly getting worse. Then I got a persistent warning that the McAfee security software had failed to complete an update; I tried to complete it, but couldn't get it to run to completion. Googling the matter, I quickly found that lots of people had lots of problems with the McAfee software on this server, and that most of these same people said the problem went away when they uninstalled the McAfee software from the server. They also warned not to use the Windows Control Panel to uninstall it, but to download a special uninstall utility from the McAfee security website. I did so and, presto!, all my network problems surrounding the server went away. It has run perfectly ever since then, dutifully backing up all my systems every night without a single network glitch. YMMV. ..bruce..

Acer h340-U2T1H

Customer Rating:
Guys i am not one to post reviews, this is my very 1st time, however on this unit i had to. the unit is excellent, i have it up and running now for a month, with not one single problem. the only thing that i would would like to pass on to prospective buyers that i could not find clearly stated in any manual on the the web site is this. if you have multiple computers etc. on your network and have assigned static ip to all units you must, change your router to DHCP, AND ALSO ONE COMPUTEPER, then the unit will be found on your network, after you have done this and install the software, you will be able to go back and change your router back to static ip, and also the one computer that you changed over, you will only at this phase, be able to assign a static ip to the acers, this process caused me to make several phone calls, and none one on the other side could help. then then sent me to a department that i had to pay $69.0 for 30 minutes for help. and they could not help me. therefore do not pay this money, just change the router to DHCP. if your network is already set to DHCP then you will not have any problems setting this unit up. and you will love the benefits that this unit have to offer. by the way this is he only reason, tech support, why i will not give this unit a 5 start

Excellent product!

Customer Rating:
Others have provided detailed reviews of the Acer Aspire easyStore, so I will merely add that I have had an extremely positive experience with it to date.

It is very user friendly, although having some working knowledge of windows and disc management/formatting is helpful (it took me one or two tries to get the addition 2TB Hitachi HDD I added up and running), and more extensive documentation would be welcome. Other than that, however, it does exactly what it's supposed to do, and it has been 100% satisfactory in its performance. I am very happy with the easyStore, and recommend it whole-heartedly!

A very intelligent backup solution and a great fast network storage solution

Customer Rating:
I bought this product, and 3x 2TB drives for a total of 8TB of space.

This product is very intelligent and quiet. It takes care of all my backup needs automatically and it even takes care of backing itself up to an external 1TB USB drive that I also had available. The approach it uses for backups if very smart, since if several computers on the network all have files in common (which is usually true since most of what is on each PC is the same as the rest), it only backs up one copy of the file, not one per PC.

The system responds very fast to media/folder browsing requests. I had a Linksys NAS 200 box before this, which was terribly slow to respond. But this box responds so fast that it seems like a local disk to me.

I also like that this network storage solution is a real computer, which means you can actually log into it using windows remote desktop and do things (if you want to, and are computer savy). That means that if something were ever to go wrong on the box, you (or a techy friend) can actually login and install/run standard windows apps to try to correct things. Most other network storage devices are linux based and not designed for login access so if something goes wrong, you can't easily get into the box to work on it.