HP MV2020 Media Vault 500 GB External Hard Drive
Does your family store, swap, and enjoy lots of digital photos, music, videos, and documents on your home computer network? HP Media Vault mv2020?expandable home network storage?lets you easily manage, share, and store everything. How much can it store? Up to 232,000 photos, 116,000 songs, or 145 hours of DVD-quality video. Also use MediaVault to back-up your main drive. It's the drive for your home network. Access up to three printers from PCs or laptops on your home network Use with wired- and wireless-networked computers in your home by connecting to your router via Ethernet cable Create automatic backups that can be set up to run weekly, daily, or continuously with the included software Protect your data with the RAID 1 capability Restore your PC in one step in the event of a hard drive failure, virus, or spyware infection Watch TV shows recorded with your Media Center PC on other PCs in your home Watch movies Increase capacity up to 1.2 terabytes with the empty expansion bay (enough to hold up to 500,000 photos, 16,000 hours of music, or 340 hours of DVD-quality video Compatibility - Windows, Mac-, and Linux-based computers HP Warranty - hardware, one-year limited; software, 90 days
HP MV2020 Media Vault 500 GB External Hard Drive Accessories
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D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Wireless Router
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D-Link DGS-2208 8-Port 10/100/1000 Desktop Switch
Netgear GS108 ProSafe 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Desktop Switch
Maxtor L01F500 500 GB SATA II Internal Hard Drive
D-Link DSM-520 MediaLounge Wireless HD Media Player
Logitech diNovo Edge (967685-0403)
Cables To Go - 40315 - 2M (6.5ft) Velocity HDMI Digital Video Cable (Blue)
HP MV2020 Media Vault 500 GB External Hard Drive Reviews
I also liked adding my printer into the network. The con for this item is the sluggish file access and occasional failure to transfer. I like the idea of accessing my file from any computer on the network. If up can live with those quirks this may be an item for you.
Let's see. What does this work with.@#$.@#$ HP's and Dell's. I can't use it to restore an IBM laptop and there is no software support for the Mac I'm using to replace the $2000 paperweight that is a brand-new T61P (did I mention that I will never spend another dime with IBM).
And the quality of the unit is so high they back it for a whole 90 days. Way to stand behind your product HP. For starters the drive that shipped with my unit had areas of corruption. So is the company that makes it. Unfortunately user mode is buggy and will lock you out of the vault or force you to reset and reconfigure on a fairly frequent basis. The warranty is for only 90 days.
My HP Media Vault has been unreliable from day one. Remember that if you have a wireless network protected by WEP security you need to run this in user mode or give access to your files to your neighbors or anyone riding by in a car with a laptop. HP want you to use this product to backup your most valuable files. The HP Media Vault is buggy and unreliable. That's right.
One benefit I liked was the ability to RAID at the partition level rather than drive.
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While this NAS doesn't have all the bells and whistles of some systems, it is a good basic unit.
The DNLA media sharing included is OK, but I will probably upgrade it to Twonkymedia.
This allowed me to have a RAID 1 partition for my critical data, but a larger non-RAID partition for other stuff.
If the internal drive fails (or you want to upgrade it) it can be removed (with basic PC skills) and the operating system reinstalled.
There is a very good web site written by the developer of the product at this link [.].
In fact my only other expense would be shipping to them and back, and I would be all set. Yes, after less than 3 hours out of the box it was failing. Fortunately, I hadn't put any files on the drive yet and it was completely empty. The unit is NOT really raid, and if the primary drive fails for any reason, both drives are instantly corrupted and unreadable. Not a good trait for a network Storage unit that is supposed to protect your data, not erase it for no particular reason.
Here's the kicker. I plugged it in and was amazed how cool it worked and how easy it was to setup. I called HP [in India] who let me know in really, really broken Enlish that they understood, and that for only $75 labor they would gladly replace my unit and reset it for me and return it to me within 6 weeks. Live and learn.
The biggest problem I see in retrospect is that the "propriatory" Operating System appears NOT to be compatible with any other operating system, which is a big problem if you're trying to dig files off of a failed hard drive, which you are guaranteed to experience if you use this unit for any length of time. Imagine my surprise an hour later when the DRIVE FAILURE icon told me it's drive had already failed and needed to be reformatted. I was busy with other things this evening, so I set it to turn off in 30 min, and I planned on dropping another drive in the tray in the morning and setting up raid. Well, this is a big problem when this drive holds your Operating System and they don't provide you with a copy or a recovery disc. I purchased a media vault today, thinking what a great product it would be.
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