Acer launches easyStore Home Server: 1TB expandable storage for $400

Acer's entering the home server market, and its first entry's gonna be the easyStore AH340-UA230N with built-in Windows Home Server. It's juiced up with Intel Atom 230 processor and 2GB DDR2 RAM, and in addition to 1TB of storage, you've got three 3.5-inch hot swappable bays for a possible total of 7TB of storage. Throw in some DLNA 1.5 certification and a $400 price tag, and you've got yourself pretty decent competitor to HP's MediaSmart lineup. According to the presser, it should be available sometime around now-ish. Mosey on after the break for a look at the its innards.

[Rito Man @ May 21st 2009 1:27AM]

Nice!! I'd hit it!!!

[Aaron Basrai @ May 21st 2009 1:26AM]

I count 4 bays...
When are case manufacturers going to catch on so we can have our own DIY servers that look as nice as this.

[Spencer @ May 21st 2009 1:33AM]

"in addition to 1TB of storage, you've got three 3.5-inch hot swappable bays"

I'd say the fourth is already taken up by a 1TB drive when you buy it, based on this.

[Adam @ May 21st 2009 1:36AM]

1 bay for the 1TB system drive, and 3 hot swappable bays.

[Aaron Basrai @ May 21st 2009 1:45AM]

I should learn to read =)

[dan7348 @ May 21st 2009 11:15AM]

I agree completely! The only case I've managed to find for my DIY Home Server is the Chenbro ES34069:

http://www.chenbro.com/corporatesite/products_detail.php?sku=79

[change @ May 21st 2009 12:06PM]

There are hotswap enclosures that fit in a standard PC case, they take up two or three 5.25" drive bays.

Examples:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121404
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817990004

[Joel @ May 21st 2009 1:06PM]

If you're looking for DIY solutions, check out the wonderful Media Server thread at AVSforums
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1071162

[DirtyVegas @ May 21st 2009 1:34AM]

Whoa looks real nice.

[mykie @ May 21st 2009 1:46AM]

Totally digging the Spiderman font for the numbers.

Too bad that hasn't worked very well for other electronics... :(

[joshuacreedgilmer @ May 21st 2009 9:06AM]

Haha...poor PS3! Great reference.

[Scott Lin @ May 21st 2009 1:50AM]

They didn't say it's RAID compatible and while that might be a given, you never really know with that low a price.

[Brendan @ May 21st 2009 2:03AM]

Windows Home Server's Drive Extender > RAID: http://www.fearthecowboy.com/2008/08/windows-home-server-drive-extender-vs.html

[Argon @ May 21st 2009 2:25AM]

Can someone please provide me a link to an online store that sells this?

[Setnev @ May 21st 2009 2:42AM]

http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=023287&cid=170 ---> Currently Out of Stock

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4633244&SRCCODE=SHOPSHOP&cm_mmc_o=2mHCjCmtB5fBbfCjCVqHCjCdwwp ---> They seem to have it in stock, for now.

Seems the only online retailers who have it are based in Canada.

[Argon @ May 21st 2009 2:47AM]

Thanks, no US store sells them currently, and almost all Canadian stores are out of stock. Tigerdirect.ca says 7-21 days before shipping, which leads me to believe that they're out of stock too. I guess I should just preorder it from amazon? Atleast it will be $399 with free shipping(excluding tax).

[ChrisH @ May 21st 2009 8:07AM]

NCIXUS has it in stock, and includes an extra 1 TB drive in the deal as well:

http://www.ncixus.com/products/37196/PG.T170W.007/Acer/

It's been tempting me for a week now.

[John @ May 21st 2009 2:57AM]

Will this support a bittorent client? How about Mac and Linux connectivity?

[Argon @ May 21st 2009 3:03AM]

There is a torrent plugin that allows you to download torrents. There are many plugins for windows home severs. Just google "Windows home server add ins"

[r3loaded @ May 21st 2009 3:20AM]

Looks awesome!

[xconan @ May 21st 2009 3:32AM]

looks like a fridge/cooler or even a mini µwave oven...

[wetworker @ May 21st 2009 3:42AM]

SWEETNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[TruthSeekr @ May 21st 2009 3:42AM]

Why does every cool piece of electronic want to use the Spiderman font??

First it was the PS3, and now this!

[Samboini @ May 21st 2009 4:25AM]

That isn't exactly 'every' cool piece of electronics, is it.

[Mike @ May 21st 2009 9:55AM]

Exactly. And the PS3 only used it because Sony owns the distribution rights to the franchise.

[Slick @ May 21st 2009 4:15AM]

And I would have just burnt up the rest of my newegg gift card on a terabyte HD & gigabit switch.. wish i had known about him last week...

[tom @ May 21st 2009 6:15AM]

It'd be really nice if they just sold the chassis without any disk/internals. It's a nice alternative to the Chenbro Mini-ITX NAS case.

[docpro @ May 21st 2009 6:22AM]

You can buy at http://www.agileelectronics.ca/prod_details/tab/details.asp?prod_id=PG%2ET170W%2E007
They ship to USA

[Bob @ May 21st 2009 8:52AM]

Looks great.

Unfortunately MS disabled RAID 5 in Windows Home Server (so if you consider everything on your drive important you only get 50% effective drive space usage).

Disappointing, otherwise this looked like the perfect little home server.

[AndyS @ May 21st 2009 9:27AM]

Yes, but the built in "drive pool" setup is much simpler for the vast majority of people that might add different sized drives over time. You can duplicate your data across drives, just not raid 5 style. And as cheap as HDs are, I think the tradeoff they made was OK.

I suspect you can actually get into RAID5 if you want, though. After all, it's basically built on Windows Server 2003 under the hood. MS doesn't recommend it, but why couldn't you create an array at the OS/hardware level and add it into the pool?

WHS is a great product that most people don't know about. I love my home built box. Sounding like the next version will be even better with some more media center integration...

[bagbklyn @ May 21st 2009 9:09AM]

I read that there's remote access, but is the remote access free?

[AndyS @ May 21st 2009 9:31AM]

Yes, WHS gives you a free SSL certificate based remote connection with free dynamic DNS address. So you'll have a URL of https://myservername.homeserver.com.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/connect.mspx

[AndyS @ May 21st 2009 9:32AM]

Oops, hit reply too soon.

From that, you can get to your data and even remotely control PCs that are on. If they aren't on, you can even use wake on lan with a free user developed app that can wake up PCs that are on the wire in the house (Lights On I think it's called).

[jon @ May 21st 2009 9:46AM]

I emailed WHS support about this a few months ago but never heard back, does anybody know if you can add partially filled drives to the drive pool and keep existing data or do you have to copy the data over and then add and format the drive?

[cscheufele @ May 21st 2009 10:16AM]

I believe it's all or nothing on all Home Servers

[AndyS @ May 21st 2009 10:29AM]

You can add the drive outside the "pool" to the server, but adding it into the pre-configured shared data pool wipes out what's on it just like a format would.

You could attach the drive to the server, transfer data off into the pool, then add the drive into the pool from the WHS console. The obvious problem is that you need to have the space in the pool to handle what's on the drive to transfer it in before adding the drive to the general pool. If you are adding a drive because the pool is full you'll need to find somewhere else to move the data as an interim step.

[jon @ May 21st 2009 10:45AM]

That's pretty much what I figured, thanks to those who answered.

[Rob @ May 21st 2009 11:02AM]

Whenever you add a hard drive to the "pool" it will get reformatted. So, everything that you have in it will be erased. The best practice is to take that content, put it in a separate hard drive, then add the one you were planning to add to the server in it. Then, you'll have to transfer that content onto the server via network. It would be nice if WHS would allow you to transfer your files via USB as it'd be faster.

[AndyS @ May 21st 2009 11:09AM]

Rob: "It would be nice if WHS would allow you to transfer your files via USB as it'd be faster."

It does. You can even add USB drives to the pool. But I'm using a USB drive to back up some data to store off site from the server.

You might need to either remote desktop in to the server or install a file manager add in to the console like WHS File Manager to see it...

http://www.whsplus.com/2009/05/18/whs-file-manager-1003/

[Chip @ May 21st 2009 1:16PM]

Any drive you connect to the server is just a normal drive (with all its contents intact) untill you manually add it to the drive pool. So if you plug in a partially filled USB drive, it acts exactly like it would if you plugged it into any other computer. You can share that drive over the network as-is, or you can move stuff between it and the server pool. You can only add whole drives to the pool, and adding them wipes out any existing data. So what you'd do here is connect the USB drive to your server, then copy everything from the drive to the server pool. Then once everything is copied, you can add the new drive to the pool.

I have 15 physical drives attached to my WHS, and this is how I added them.

[jon @ May 21st 2009 5:45PM]

@chip
Much grass, I figured that's how it would have to be, I was just hoping that I would be able to skip a couple steps.
Copying and then reformatting 1.5TB drives takes forever.

[Brendan @ May 21st 2009 10:18AM]

I'm afraid not jon, when you add a drive to the Windows Home Server storage pool it is formatted and you lose anything on it... in order to keep the data on it you would need to manually copy everything off and then add it to the pool.

[TRS @ May 21st 2009 10:41AM]

mini fridge anyone?

[RyanTV @ May 21st 2009 10:55AM]

Will this unit act as a Media Center server for my extenders? I have 3 extenders in my house and if i want to access media from them now, I have to have my desktop turned on. If i could just use this box as a NAS and the Media Center server that would be great.

[RyanTV @ May 21st 2009 10:56AM]

oh and one more question, what about apple TV? would it be able to use files from this server as well?

[AndyS @ May 21st 2009 11:12AM]

You still need to have a host media center PC on, but you can pool your media files onto the server to share through that PC, including recorded TV as of the latest update.

The rumors are the next version of WHS will be more integrated.

I can't speak to Apple TV, but I wouldn't see why not if it will allow you to store data on a network share.

[Galicki @ May 21st 2009 11:38AM]

can you dump the OS and load Linux+SqueezeCenter? I'm guessing in the living room this will sound like a jet engine.

[lizeth @ May 21st 2009 12:06PM]

looks great, but can you upgrade the processor?

[John Webster @ May 21st 2009 12:41PM]

I am a freelance web developer and am thinking of using this as a file server / backup system. Will this device be able to work with Carbonite or other backup systems?

[Chip @ May 21st 2009 1:46PM]

Carbonite specifically does not support WHS. Other services may, but it seems pretty common to either not allow backing up of network drives, or charging a lot more for it.

One of WHS's quirks is that the storage pool shows up as a network drive even on the server itself, so there is no good way to make it work with online backup services.