HP MediaSmart Server Project Update – Windows Home Server

As I mentioned about 8 months ago, I purchased an HP MediaSmart Server with the intention of making it the hub of my home network. It’s been a bit of an interesting ride, so I thought I’d bring you up to date on that project.

The box came with 512MB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive. I knew 500GB wasn’t going to be enough to backup my existing computers, much less provide any additional storage, so I bought a 1TB internal drive along with the machine and installed that right after the initial setup, giving me a total of 1.5TB of storage.

I moved my music files and some other archives to the home server to free up some space on my main desktop machine, but otherwise, just set up that machine, my laptop, netbook, and my wife’s laptop to be backed up to the home server nightly. I’ve since replaced the desktop machine, but not before copying its data to the home server.

As a storage platform and automatic backup system, the home server works pretty well. I created shares on the server for music, photos, software installs, and user data then mapped drives on each of the machines to those shares. Windows Explorer simply sees them as drives and file transfers are quick and easy via the network.

I’ve learned a few things along the way, some of which were surprising. The big surprise was learning that if you let Windows automatically update on the home server it will spontaneously reboot itself when the update calls for it. I’ve since told it to download the updates and let me know they’re ready. I had hoped to be able to work on documents directly on the server, but this little “feature” makes it necessary to have a copy on the local machine and update the server as changes are made.

The first time I encountered this one I was, of course, in the middle of editing a document that was stored on the server. I was able to recover without a major data loss, but it was not one of the fonder memories I have of the home server! I had thought perhaps setting the Windows updates to notify instead of automatic would eliminate the problem, but no such luck. It still reboots occasionally, although it’s always around midnight so if I’m paying attention I can anticipate it.

Another thing I learned was that the server is a real worry wart! There are three status levels: normal/healthy (green), needs attention (yellow) and “Omigod the sky is falling!” (red). The latter is accompanied by dire messages like “your network health is critical!” Not only that, the normally blue status LED on the front of the box (which stays blue in “condition yellow”, go figure) changes to red, apparently to get your attention.

There are all kinds of things that trigger a yellow alert. If a machine known to the server hasn’t been backed up in 7 days or more, warning messages begin displaying saying “[name of machine] hasn’t been backed up since [date of last backup]. Your network health is at risk!” Since my machines aren’t all turned on and connected to the network 24/7, this happens a lot.

When this situation occurs, I have three choices: ignore the incessant warning messages, connect the designated machine to the network and back it up, or go into the Home Server Console and tell it to ignore the situation. If a machine isn’t likely to be used for a while, I’ll do the latter just to shut the server up and hopefully turn the yellow tray status icon back to green, at least for a while.

It becomes a sort of game to see how long you can keep the status icon green. You have to become resigned to the fact that it will be yellow quite often. There’s almost always something the thing isn’t happy about!

There’s apparently something a little flakey about my 1TB server hard drive. The past couple of months I’ve been getting “File conflicts” messages. These are yellow alerts, too. File conflicts are not a good thing, and in my case have been indicating that there’s an error on the hard drive. Maybe it’s a bad sector, maybe something else, I’m not sure and I haven’t had the time to dig into it and diagnose it properly.

I’ll occasionally get a red alert that the drive is “unhealthy” which tells me to “repair” it. Back to the Windows Home Server Console to run the Repair function on the drive. This is very likely good old CHKDSK, but it does seem to repair the problems which warning about possible data loss. A successful repair will turn the status icon green…until it discovers that the file conflicts are still there.

This last time, it was a set of four files which apparently were listed in the directory but didn’t really exist. I went in to the share on a connected machine and deleted them. That wasn’t good enough, the file conflict messages continue. The drive reports healthy, however, so there’s no option to run Repair again. –sigh–

I’ve mentioned the Windows Home Server Console. This bit of software until recently took performance to a new low. I’ve seen glaciers move faster!

Seriously, the login nearly always failed the first time (“Cannot connect to your server”). Clicking the OK button generally logged in, but it took several minutes for that to happen. Once in, clicking on any of the toolbar buttons required waiting another few minutes (not seconds, mind you, minutes!). Eventually, something would happen as a result of the mouse click, then the cycle would start over again if another mouse click was needed.

In trying to troubleshoot that phenomenon, I learned that you can access the server via Remote Desktop just like a “real” Windows machine! Doing so, however, is less productive than you might think. For one thing, when you log in, Internet Explorer pops up and delivers a dire warning that bypassing the WHS Console can have dire consequences (you could screw something up royally) and you really shouldn’t be doing this. Suffice to say that working directly in the server is not for the faint of heart and you’d better know what you’re doing to avoid catastrophe.

Within the past several weeks, the WHS Console has magically become fairly usable. Gone are the multi-minute reaction times. While performance is nowhere near snappy, it’s at least tolerable. You know that when you click something, you’ll see a response in this lifetime. The login even works the first time…usually. Whoever fixed this has my undying gratitude!

The MediaSmart Server isn’t really designed to be what I had in mind, but I’m adapting to it. If nothing else, the automatic backups are a major plus. Now I just have to implement a plan to backup the server itself!

John The Geek

Seesmic Desktop – Time For Another Look?

In my last post on Twitter tools I mentioned that I’d tried Seesmic Desktop, but stayed with TweetDeck due to some issues with Seesmic Desktop. Shortly after that post appeared, an updated Seesmic Desktop was released that addressed many of the complaints I’d had with it.

I’m now using Seesmic Desktop as my primary Twitter interface. There are still a few things about it that could be improved, but overall, it’s working really well for me.

The big advantage of Seesmic Desktop over TweetDeck is its ability to handle multiple Twitter accounts simultaneously. TweetDeck can only display one account at a time. Although there is a way to use the Search function to monitor other accounts, you can only tweet or retweet from the account with which you’re logged in.

Seesmic Desktop, on the other hand, gives you the ability to not only monitor multiple accounts, displaying the account(s) to which a particular tweet was addressed, but to reply or retweet from any of your accounts without a separate login. IMO, this feature puts Seesmic Desktop ahead of TweetDeck by a long way.

I’d like to see Seesmic Desktop provide a means of synchronizing settings between multiple machines. I use a minimum of two different computers on any given day and regularly use up to four different machines. It would be wonderful to have a way to automatically synchronize the settings between all my machines and avoid the lame manual copying that has to happen now.

You can download Seesmic Desktop for free from here:

http://desktop.seesmic.com/

John The Geek

Does Anyone Here Understand Credibility?

I completely understand the concept of making lemonade when life hands you lemons. More power to those who are creative enough to do that rather than sitting around whining about their problems. I saw an interesting example of that today that illustrates a couple of different types of creativity.

I got an email from a marketer to whose list I subscribe. This guy is pretty well known and I assume pretty successful. The email basically said he’d done something really dumb and he wanted to share the experience for the benefit of his readers.

He provided a link to a PDF which contained the tale of how he’d fallen for a fairly cleverly designed phishing email despite his sophistication and experience on the Internet. His bank caught the situation and returned his money and all turned out okay aside from this guy feeling like the complete idiot that he’d made of himself.

The final paragraph says basically “Hey, I’m telling you this out of the goodness of my heart despite being terminally embarassed. There are no links in this document, nothing being sold, and feel free to pass it around to everyone you think might benefit.”

What a guy, right? We can all relate to doing something dumb and wanting to help others avoid the same fate. So, I’m thinking here’s a guy who’s generating some good will by admitting his human foibles and warning others so they’ll be more careful than he was.

Then I read the PS. Seems he’s got himself fixed up with a way to handle this problem if it ever occurs again, and oh, by the way, I might just want to read about it and see if it’s something I can use, too. I just click this link right here.

The link is pretty obviously an affiliate link, albeit cloaked. Being the curious sort that I am, I copy the URL into my browser and go visit. Imagine my surprise! My altruistic friend just happens to be a business associate (read affiliate) of the outfit which will provide identity theft protection should I be interested in same.

So, now we’ve gone from “no links here and nothing for sale” to “I just happen to have a solution to the problem I’m trying to convince you that you have.” Sort of like those “free” CDs that you only have to pay shipping for (which means they’re NOT FREE) and oh-by-the-way you’ll be charged $29.95 a month for the whiz-bang monthly membership that goes with it unless you happen to remember to cancel it, assuming you can correctly guess the current population of New York City plus or minus 5 people, or whatever other arcane cancellation criteria they’ve devised.

Now, let’s get something clear here. I am in no way against affiliate marketing. I do it myself and it’s a perfectly legitimate way to run a business.

What’s not legitimate is telling my reader that there are no links when there clearly is one, and that there’s nothing for sale when the opposite is true. Let’s call it what it is: lying.

Call it a fib, call it an evasion of the truth, call it whatever you want, it’s still a lie. The thing that I don’t understand is: why lie when it’s so obvious that you’re lying?

Personally, I make a point not to lie if for no other reason than my memory’s not that good any more! I’ve known people who were expert liars. They would have been totally embarrassed to have made it that easy to catch them in a lie. I mean, if you’re going to make lying part of your profession, at least do it on a professional level!

Seriously, do these guys even know they’re lying? Obviously, they don’t care, at least not enough to even make the effort to lie well.

I don’t know about you, but when I encounter something like this, it immediately blows that marketer’s credibility right out of the water. It’s just as likely that his little phishing story is made-up BS than not. And, if that story’s made up, what about the rest of what he’s telling/selling me?

Trust is a very difficult thing to build. It’s way easier to lose. This guy has lost my trust, and for what? A few bucks in commissions? Well, he won’t be making even those few bucks off of me, nor will he be making anything else from me again. Sleep well, dude.

John The Geek