HP Media Vault MV2120

After owning this Media Vault for 4 months, so far so good. Nothing bad happen yet. The drive is still working...cross my fingers. However, I still haven't figured out how to get my laptop to connect to the… Vault. I installed the software and all my connections are good. But just can't get the network to work together. Oh yes, I can share files thru the web alright but again, it can't connect with my laptop.

expand

collapse

The 2120 box is pretty good. I have 2 500GB Seagate drives and a 500GB WD Green Caviar as USB backup. I used to have an older MSS plus that didn't have the redundancy I needed which is why I went with the… HP. It has gig ethernet which allows the box to support sustained 17MB/sec transmission to the storage system. I had to crack it open to swap out drives and taking a look on the inside I think design is nicely done. I was really impressed by the tech support that is available for these devices. I've been able to get through to HP support without waiting. The best part about it is that I talked with very knowledgeable folks that helped me resolve all of my issues. I come from an IT background and I have to say the support guys running the show for this group are top notch. I would buy this product just because support is really that good !

expand

collapse

The HP MV 2120 is a good NAS that falls short of being great. The good: Back up software can back up all your key files automatically and even keep a few revisions. It supports gigabit ethernet, so the… transfer rates are really limited to the OS and the Hard Drive speeds. Easy to set up and having running quickly. You can back up to any USB external HDD for redundancy. Bad: No easy way to restore from the backup. Make sure when you are backing up to the USB, you are using FAT, otherwise, Windows will not recognize the data. No support for NTFS on the US back up drive. NTFS is so much more reliable and faster and more efficient then FAT. Surely HP could have found a way When using 2 drives, they are imaged into one drive. That is a positive and a negative. Postive is having much more flexibility and not running out of drive space when 1 drive is full. Bad part is when 1 drive fails, your whole system fails and you need to depend on your USB back up. With HDDs being so cheap nowadays, its concievable that the drive quality is lesser and life expectancy is lowered. It really does require plans to add redundancy to ensure all your photos are safe. I have copies here on the MV2120, on my PC and also in a copy in a back up USB drive. I have lost thousands of pictures once when my PC HDD failed. I won't take that chance a second time. If you want more then 2 bays, I would get the server version of this. Its worth the price to get more bays.

expand

collapse

HP Media Vault stores its files in a volume that CANNOT be read if one puts installs the MV hard disk into a PC. The disk format is incompatible. I had a Media Vault that had a "problem" and could no… longer by seen on the network. The cure for that problem (according to HP) was reloading the Media Vault Software...which would entail ERASING ALL MY DATA ON THE MEDIA VAULT. Well, gee thanks HP. Your product has one purpose in life, to backup data files, however it is impossible to recover the data off the disk if the MV itself has a problem.

expand

collapse

My whole CD collection on a single device that doesn't require my computer to be on. I can access my entire music collection from my ROKU Sound Bridge (Internet Radio directly connected to my stereo) or… from my Play Station 3. Easy to set up. It's Linux-based, too (though you won't know it because there is a windows interface). The HP media-servers are windows based and, from what I read, Microsoft upgrades them into oblivion the same way it does with Windows - you know, they keep updating the software until it gets so slow it becomes unusable. No such problem with the Linux based media vault. Simple, inexpensive and beautiful...

expand

collapse