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Do you have a HP Generation 1 MediaVault (2010-2050) with a bad motherboard or maybe you just want more power or want to change its functionality? Read on, this article is for you! History: Back around 2006 HP released the Generation 1 MediaVault NAS (models 2010-2050). All were hardware identical except for the drive size provided. This product offered features like file sharing, media sharing (such as streaming music, videos, movies) and digital pictures. It also provided a secure source for local PC backups and internet access. One important feature was the ability to mirror it's 2 internal SATA drives. The Gen. 1 platform was later redesigned and updated to become the HP MediaVault 2100 and 5100/5200 series. These look like mini HP Mediasmart servers with only 2 drives and feature a different processor and file system. HP offered a Raid 1 "like" mirror system based on the Reiser file system which in theory was a good idea but actually created a number of complications for the user. If a secondary drive failed it was somewhat easy to replace and restore but when the system encountered a primary drive failure special procedures were required to insure the data on the...
You have seen the announcements from HP saying their MediaSmart Server is going the way of the DoDo. No doubt you share my feelings of sorrow and abandonment once again by a major corporation; my guess would be because of the fiasco with Vail and the Drive Extender issue. In it's place, HP wants you to buy a new Drobo. Oh well, life goes on in the world of computing. No more digressing, time to focus on the subject at hand. Part 2: More Performance and a New Operating System So, you performed the Celeron to the Pentium Dual core upgrade to squeeze a little more life out of your MSS and you want to know what else can be done extend the life of that neat little black box. Maybe you are considering a software upgrade to Windows Home Server 2011 or something else more powerful. Are you asking: Can I squeeze out a little more performance out of my 485 /7 dual core platform? Is it possible to efficiently run a new operating system on my MSS.? Can I expand the memory for said new operating system? All of the above questions can be answered with a yes...
The HP MediaSmart Server system drive is divided into two partitions, one 20GB partition for the OS and system files, and the rest devoted to storage for the data pool. Some users, myself included, have encountered an issue where the 20GB system partition fills up with data to the point where things like Windows Updates aren't possible because there isn't enough space to install them. The culprit behind the disk consumption are these pesky log files that get generated. Over time these log files get huge, eating up gigbytes of space until there isn't any left in the system partition. Worse, there's no way to correct the issue from the home server console, and the disk cleanup wizard bundled with Windows doesn't find or remove them. I've read various ideas as to the root cause, everything from errors with the Video Converter and certain video files, to issues with the backup service. I haven't been able to figure out exactly what's causing it in my system, though I think my issue is with the Media Collector. However, I have determined that manually logging in via Remote Desktop every few weeks to deleting log files from the Windows folder manually is...
