WHS: Enough with the Reboots!

I've had it. The chip upgrade was a bust. To test my theory that it was the over-endowed muscle that was killing my server daily, I quickly disassembled and reassembled humpty-dumpty in less than 10-minutes using the old Sempron stock chip.

Guess what, Voila! No more reboots, no more hangs, no more shutdowns. The memory upgrade was sufficient enough to get everything up to speed. So yeah, I guess HP was right in allowing the memory upgrade but not the chip as it is sufficient to run the standard gamut of applications intended. Of course, if you're wanting to use the MediaSmart for some super computing then maybe its best to invest in some high power fans, extra cooling, or better yet building your own instead of using the weakly ventilated version.

WHS: Upgrades with Zip Zoom Bang!

So I finally caved in and got some new hardware. It was fortunate that I found cheaper options for the NetGear FVS336G and the only place for Seagate Barracuda 1.5 TB drives at NewEgg. Figured with the shipping I may as well let it ride.

Following the basic memory and chip upgrade instructions the only difference would be the use of an AMD LE-1660 (Lima) 2.7 GHz.


G.Skill 2GB DDR2 667Mhz PC-5300 which was on sale for $30 that week.







First things first, remove the installed drives and label them so you know which order to put them back. WHS uses DE and you don't want to confuse the operating system and inadvertently trashing your data. The main bay is locked and I used a quarter to twist this clockwise (a large screwdriver would work but beware the groove marks if its tight).






Slide the gray top cover forward gently and it should slide out from the grooves. There are four actions items from this angel that you need to do.

Make sure to mark where the cables match up and be careful not to switch things around later (it could be bad).




Gently remove the black cable as well and gently move it out of the way.








Twist the blue tabs outward to unlock the backplane. Its this backplane that serves to connect the SATA disks.





Put your hand in and reach for the spaces with your fingers, then gently pull up. Be careful as there's a (barely used) thermostat you don't want to damage as you do this.
Remove the two-(2) small black screws on the front lower right side of the casing.






There's an insulated cable in there thats pressed against it and will usually cause it to pop out (don't loose the screws!). Do this gently (I keep saying that) since too much pressure on these small screws could ruin their tread -- mine's almost that way.

Use a medium sized Philip's screwdriver to remove the two-(2) anchoring screws between the casing and power supply.



Gently pull this tray out while gently pushing left as the components tend to snag.







Welcome to the guts/brains of your HP EX475 system.









Disconnect the power supply cable from the board and move it out of the way.






Remove the stick of memory as well. You'll need all the space to remove the heatsink from the chip by unscrewing it in an X-pattern so as to relieve the pressure on the chip gradually.

Then with a twisting left and right action gently remove.








With pure alcohol (pick one type as long as its more than 70% proof such as vodka or isoprophyl) make sure to clean the heatsink and set it aside to dry.

For those who've never replaced a chip before, there's a lever that needs to be lifted before you can remove the chip for replacement. Be careful to re-orient the new chip's pins the same way (don't forget to wipe the beads of sweat off your brow as any of it dripping onto the board isn't good ... and close your mouth).

A little goes a long way in terms of the heat seal, just a 1.5 grain of rice will do.







Then put Humpty-Dumpty together again and reverse the steps above.






Since I was using pure isopropyl and drinking that could cause major gastric distress (check the label), best I could do was step outside for a beer and a smoke. :-)

Update: HP MediaSmart EX475

Alright y'all .... after poring through the forums for a tip (no, the HP site is only good for basic configuration instructions) I came across a mention of successful restore when someone used an unpatched Windows XP as the client -- so you have to be vulnerable to fix this damn unit? Thank God for firewalls then.

But guess what, I work for an anti-malware company. Part of my lingo is "patch, patch, patch, ... and patch!". That saying, I don't have an old unpatched copy of Windows XP since my oldest is a least SP1. I dare not install Windows 2k its already 2 years away from being 30 years old in dog years :-(

Then it came to me. My son inherited an old Compaq Presario 2100 with (dare I hope) an outdated version of Windows XP. In fact, better than that, I had patched it previously but never took the time to take stock on the different but it was running Windows XP Home. So since he was grounded for the day anyway (kids these days need to take a breather from being online constantly ... but I digress) grabbed the unit it plugged it into my secure network and voila, THAT worked! WHS Connect installed flawless. To that I say ^$#$%#$%^&!!!

So to those who are stuck up creek's ville for solution, try Windows XP Home. It is after all technically what should be connected to Windows Home Server :-) *sigh*

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My 1TB is filled up. Thats one of the major questions I had with this unit, does it use RAID or what? Apparently its using something similar but of course using Microsoft's implementation of dynamic drives -- meaning it generally splits the total volume by half and creates a copy of everything. Effectively, that meant I really had some 500GB of Seagate Barracuda SATA v11 drive space left. *sigh*

Time to move files around again and I'm anxiously waiting for my supplier to sell me some cheap 1TB storage. This holiday week Fry's is selling a WD 1TB for about $179.99 but am looking for something cheaper. After all, if I were in Singapore or Malaysia or Taiwan these drives would probably cost half that sale price!

The hunt for storage space goes on NOW.

HP MediaSmart EX475

This is probably my 2nd system reset attempt tonight and its driving me nuts!

After seeing my friend's Joe and Laura's use of the EX470 for their web server use I decided to look around for similar products.

I've already got a Promise NS4300N which also serves as my FTP and file storage backup, just recently upgraded to have an iTunes and BitTorrent plug-ins (and before that my lowly LAN|Drive was dong all the FTP and file sharing).My blogs (this one included) are happily hosted by Blogger. To reach me on whatever protocol I've already used DynDNS to redirect wherever. My trusty old Netgear WGRv4 has been so far redirecting all traffic where it needs to. So why even?

The answer is simple. Even after switching to Gigabit ethernet my NS4300N wasn't performing to the standards. File transfers were ok but iTunes took a little more buffering time. Besides, I technically don't own it and so it makes sense for me to move all my personal stuff off of it in the off hand just in case, you know?

Looking thru an online bulletin board I happened on someone selling about a hundred bucks cheaper than what I would pay even if I did go with Fry's sale price this weekend. Justifying the need vs cost, I went for it.

The big problem here is that the EX475 (a 1TB implementation of the EX740) had already been pre-configured for someone and I didn't want to have to call the seller until the last option After all, this gadget guru wasn't going to give up on a system until it gave way to splitting its innards ... which is really close on this system mind you.

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Its almost 4am, time for a nap.


(image courtesy of HP.com)