Apartment Therapy Unplugged | How To Create Your Own Media Server

We've seen more than a few simple ways of storing, backing up and accessing your family's data. You might thing that the best way would be to buy one of the media servers, like the one pictured above from Sony. You're wrong. Creating your own little media server is quite easy and straightforward. You don't need to know a lot about computers to set it up.

Basically, the only thing that you need to share information on your home network is a hard drive. We're actually suggesting a wireless hard drive to cut down on the clutter. A wireless hard drive with WiFi can be configured to act like a media server, a backup of all of your digital files.

The Iomega StorCenter is a good way to start. It's got 1 TB of storage, that's a 1000 GB. It's wireless and accessible from anywhere in your home network, so that you can access the data and stream it.

If you need a way to stream this backed up information to your HDTV, then you should consider a small PC to add to your home theater setup. This doesn't sound as hard as it is actually. You simply need to find a small PC with a small form factor that simply isn't like a big box filled with computer junk. The Shuttle X2700N provides all of what you need in a sleek and neat little package.

Since this little computer only costs about $380, you can easily add a giant hard drive to it, say 1 TB. This way you'll be using it as a media server since it is also WiFi enabled. The first option would be for the people who already have a solution to stream information to their HDTVs. The second is for those looking for one.

MORE MEDIA SERVERS
Toshiba Media Server

the technical term for these hardrives is NAS (network attached storage).

besides containing a harddrive, these also come with some processor/cpu, many of them running some variation of linux. as opposed to a stand-alone harddrive, they therefore can be connected directly to your network (e.g. router) instead of to your computer. thereby they become easily available to all computers on your network. (you would probably rarely have them on you desk like in the picture of the iomega store center, but rather somewhere hidden in a closet)

some of these also include special streaming media servers to allow streaming of any media (audio/video) you have on them to certain devices (e.g. playstation)

i can recommend the hp mv2120 ( http://www.amazon.com/HP-MV2120-500GB-Media-Vault/dp/B0015313O8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1224530256&sr=1-1 ). has been working great for me so far, and can be updated with an additional hd for more storage or redundant backup. also does not require any software to be installed on your machine.

posted by martin g on October 20th 2008 at 10:33am
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