I showed this to my buddy and he is interested in the unit as well, but only if it can be used as an ESATA device. In otherwords, he's wants to connect directly to the MSS via ESATA (eg, extrernal drive), I basically told him, I wasn't sure, but I didn't think so as this would "defeat" the purpose of the MSS being a NAS (appliance)...

Am I rightt?


Thanks,



-Alex

You are right, the MSS is a network device, not direct attach. You can directly attach an eSATA HDD to the server, but not directly attach the server to your PC. Your buddy is looking for a different product.

Thx, Yakuza, I'm getting ready to purchase the MSS now... Trying to decide though on the 470 @ $550 or the 475 @ $710 from B&H...

Nah, I'll probably just go with the 470 and buy my own SATA drives fron NewEgg... 500GB sata for $150 (EX475) doesn't seem much of a bargain!



-Alex

Yeah, I scratch my head over that one too! Though some people prefer to get the system as a whole, due to support concerns, but with a device like this that is meant to be user upgraded for the HDDs, makes sense to me to save the extra $$!

A note -- if you wait until you install your 2nd HDD before you run through the setup process on the MSS, it'll automatically add it to the WHS volume and enable duplication on all shares during the setup process. Otherwise you have to manually add the drive and enable duplication.

Awesome, if the SATA prices are cheap enough then, maybe, I'll max them ALL out!!! Going to newegg now!

www.tigerdirect.com has Seagate Barracuda 500 GB SATA for $109, Western Digitals for $119.

Regarding the original post, you know, if his PC is newer he could have a gigabit connection. Add a gigabit switch (~$50), map the right share and BAM! You got a connected drive that transfers like local and does much more.

Take THAT drobo!

Thanks Necro, I tried to tell him that already, but he swears that the ESATA direct connect is going to be faster than Gigabyte Ethernet... For me, my purposes for this device is for flexible storage capacity and throughput/bandwidth is secondary to me compared to storage. He will be doing HD video streaming at least 720P sometimes even as high as 1080P so bandwidth is going to be paramount for him...

Well, he's right on the speed. SATA II runs at 3Gb/s. Gigabit runs at 1Gb/s.

So technically, it's three times as fast. BUT, when you are talking about streaming video, you don't really need 3Gb/s speed. You don't even really need 1Gb/s speed. Most videos only hit around 25-30Mb/s in bandwidth.

I stream 720P and 1080P all the time and never have a problem.

HP reports successfully running 6 x 720p simultaneous streams off the MSS...