Not too bad for a softraid. I'll try and post some. Yeah, don't think can post write test since it's already half filled.

Anyway, on my other NAS box (NMH300), FTP is more stable for file transfer. If I do normal copy paste on large file tranfers, I get time outs with the NHM300... Not so with my Linkstation DUO which I bought later. Very stable performance. If I had known, I would have bought the Linkstation DUO instead of the NMH300. Nice interface but performance sucks.

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Added on November 4, 2010, 1:57 pmIt actually has 6... 5 internal SATA ports and 1 eSATA.

Out of the 5, 4 of them from the SAS breakout cable and 1 separate one directly from the mobo to the DVD burner.

I took out my DVD burner and put the 160GB Seagate boot drive there. The other 4 spaces are filled up with the 2TB Samsung F4EG drives.

This post has been edited by jchue73: Nov 4 2010, 01:57 PM

Small file transfers, the normal 2 bay NAS boxes are fine. I get about 30MB/s thereabouts with a Linkstation DUO and I'm pretty satisfied with the performance for the price paid. But if you start to transfer large quantity and large file sizes (not just Megabytes, but Gigabytes and Terabytes), the difference in waiting time will be more obvious.

On my Microserver, transfering an 8Gb file takes about 70 seconds or so.

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Added on November 8, 2010, 10:54 amI think the Microserver route with FreeNAS or Unraid is in the right direction if you just need a simple NAS box with lots of flexibility. Not forgetting that it's relatively cheap too.

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Added on November 8, 2010, 10:54 amHey, I like the Synology and Qnap too. But I dislike the price regarless of how beautiful the GUI is.

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Added on November 8, 2010, 10:55 am Why is it surprising? It's meant to be an OS drive anyways.

Well, I guess HP could throw in a 1TB drive instead like what Acer did with H342. The thing is I compared the street price difference between the HP and the Acer and with the price of the HP, you can comfortably add an additional 2TB with some spare change.

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Added on November 8, 2010, 11:12 amAny idea what processor is that? I think compared to the processing power and memory of the Microserver, I think it's not even close.

This post has been edited by jchue73: Nov 8 2010, 11:12 AM

Fair enough. But even if the Synologys were equipped with a 1.8GHz Atom CPU like some of the Qnap x59+ models, processor power would still be lower than the AMD on the Microserver.

BTW, the AMD N36L CPU on the Microserver is a x64.

Pardon my ignorance. Can you explain a little bit more or point to website that explains this?

Is the Pro already available? I use the older non Pro version;

http://buffalotech.com/products/network-st...n-duo-ls-wxlr1/

I'm quite satisfied with the price paid. The performance is not bad and quite responsive. Of course not as responsive as Microserver. Accessing files on the Microserver feels as if the storage is on the same PC !

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Added on November 10, 2010, 7:30 pmYup.

This post has been edited by jchue73: Nov 10 2010, 07:30 PM

I think that question basically boils down to you... Do you know how to setup your own PC for BT and simple file sharing? If you can, the Microserver should be straight forward. Installing a copy of Windows Home Server would be most simple.

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Added on November 11, 2010, 5:36 pmThe second link even has a comparison between the Microserver and the Acer H340.

Anyway, a more detailed specs of the Microserver can be found here;

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quicksp...a/13716_na.html

This post has been edited by jchue73: Nov 11 2010, 05:36 PM

Hey, I thought after asking so many questions to denhock, you would already bought one by now.

Damn. I think I need to buy another Microserver. The current one is filling up fast. Unless get a eSATA 4 or 5 bay box and connect it to the Microserver. Oh, yes, heard that the eSATA port on the Microserver does not support Port Multiplication. Need to put in an extra PCIe x1 eSATA card for that. I read the eSATA port from the Acer H342 supports PM.

Also thinking of putting a PCI x4 dual or quad network card to upgrade the network bandwidth via link aggregation LACP. But that would also require LACP aware switch.

RM 919.

Didn't buy it at All IT. Bought it at the HP reseller at Digital Mall.

Last I saw (about more than a month ago), only the All IT at the Curve had it. The Lowyat and Digital Mall outlet did not have it. Perhaps now would have changed.

The HP microserver is everything of the above except that it does not support RAID 5. To save on OS, you could use Linux. Only RAID 0 and RAID 1 from BIOS. But of course that does not stop you from getting a 3rd party PCIe x4 or x1 RAID card that supports RAID 5. That will bump up the price a little but I believe it will still be below your 2k budget.

Else, the Synology is not too bad but at a higher price.

Wah ! Got discount some more?

Actually with RAIDXpert under Windows Server 2008 R2, you only get RAID 1 or RAID 0 as per the BIOS. You need to enable RAID in BIOS before RAIDXpert takes over in OS. The RAIDXpert is exactly like Intel's version of Matrix Manager or Storage Manager.

Yup. Those are the reasons and features that attracted me to the HP.

Have not tried Windows 7 on the Microserver but I would think it should work? I believe mercindustries tried Windows 7 on the Microserver. Perhaps he can give valuable input.

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Added on December 7, 2010, 3:43 amHave you tried renaming the mkv files to avi just to check if it will work?

I cannot speak for the other NAS boxes but I believe with the Microserver that you can run an OS like the Windows Server 2008 R2, you can try installing softwares like TVersity or Mezzmo. These are the two names that often come up when you want to stream mkv files. Have not tried it yet but I think only Mezzmo works on Windows Server 2008 R2?



This post has been edited by jchue73: Dec 7 2010, 03:43 AM

Congrats trix. Thanks on the feedback for the Windows 7. For the AMD chipset drivers, was it straight forward from the built-in Windows 7 drivers?

How did you solve the audio problem? What sound card did you put in the Microserver?

If you use it as a NAS / download box, perhaps you could shift the DVDRW drive as an external USB unit since the DVDRW hardly gets used.

Oh, if you already plan to add Bluray drive, perhaps you can plan to have it as external USB.

You can try Windows Server 2008 R2 or Redhat Linux. No idea about the shutdown times the Linux OS.

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Added on December 18, 2010, 10:37 pmI think trix said it was ok to run the Microserver with Windows 7. Look at his post.

On a side note, I thought I came across a newspaper advert that that the Microserver is now at RM 1200++ or something like that? The specs remained the same though.

This post has been edited by jchue73: Dec 18 2010, 10:37 PM

Just as I suspected, price has gone up a little. Took this two nights ago.


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I don't download files using my Microserver though but the network card on the Microserver hits close to 120++ MB/s on transfers from my other PCs. I leave the settings as is and use HP's driver downloaded from the website.

Am running Windows Server 2008 R2 for what it's worth.

I have not installed Windows 7 on the Microserver.

But 3 x 720p streams off the Microserver is not bad. But I must credit it to your wifi router more than anything since it's quite difficult to maintain 3 streams via wifi. May I ask what wifi router is that?

1x 720p stream is roughly about 0.8 MB/s. For easy calculation, let's take it 1 MB/s. 3 of those stream will total up to 3MB/s max. That's very easily done on the Microserver actually. I usually stream BD isos and complete BDMV folders with no problems. They stream about 5 to 6MB/s.

Anyway, if you want to check the network performance of the Microserver (not the wifi router), install something like a bandwidth monitor to see what is the real time input / output. You can also check using the performance tool under Task Manager.

Indeed, this morning I opened the Star papers and saw this advert

Hopefully the shops still maintain old prices.


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Nice find on the Youtube clip. But it does not say how many drives it's installed. My guess is that it's only measuring power at the default configuration which is with the single 160GB drive.

Anyway, no idea if the prices at the shops have increased. Let me know as I might be interested in another or perhaps get a esata RAID box connected to the current Microserver.