Hands on: Working with Windows Home Server

Recover to cover
Notice, however, that I’ve not mentioned a DVD drive in the Media Smart server which, on the face of it, would leave you stymied if anything were to go wrong. To this end you also get a special recovery DVD, ready to pop into a network PC and run a custom remote recovery program.

Press a hidden button on the server when prompted and you can either recover the server, leaving all your data, backups and settings intact, or return completely to the factory setup, in which case all data will be lost.

There are also some differences when it comes to the software setup. It’s still Windows Home Server at heart, based on Windows Server 2003 R2, but with a few HP-inspired tweaks and third-party add-ons.

Among these are an iTunes server to stream music to Apple iTunes players and HP Photo Webshare, which lets you share photos both over the Lan and via the internet.

There’s also an extra Media Smart page in the WHS console from which these add-ins can be configured, along with a tool to dim the Leds on the front of the cabinet and another to configure HP’s own automatic updates option.

Remote access will also be enabled by default and the settings managed from here, while deeper inside the GUI there’s a tool to monitor the HP hardware.

Apart from all that the Media Smart server works just like any other machine running WHS. As such it can take advantage of the Power Pack 1 update.

At the time of writing, however, the software was still in public beta, although being of a brave - some might say reckless - disposition I downloaded and installed it to see what it had to offer. Not, I hasten to add, onto the HP Media Smart server but my own desktop PC creation.