This post should be short, but it won’t be. For the last fifteen years, I have related my trials and tribulations relative to my home computer network. Over the years, my setup has included multiple computers, printers, Roku media streamers all communicating with each other through a single piece of hardware – my Windows Home Server running on a HP EX470 MediaSmart Server.
As it has done every night for the past 15 years, the Server went to sleep last Tuesday at 11:30 PM with the intent to wake up Wednesday morning at 5:30 AM to start backing up the other computers on the network. Sadly, the Server never woke up and I was unable to get it to even start up. In short, it died in its sleep (just as I hope to do when my time comes).
I face the fact that the Server was 15 years old, which certainly exceeds the life expectancy of most home computers. Still, I had a dilemma. My streaming media library was on the Server as were many of our user backup files and accumulated documentations. When the power supply of the Server died in 2019, I was able to find a replacement power supply on eBay. This time I didn’t even look. Painfully and reluctantly, I decided to let the 15 year old Server go.
Yes, I still have a requirement for all the services the Server had provided, but I can’t invest tons of money into buying a replacement machine. So, last Thursday, I bought a Beelink Min PC, Mini S12 Pro as a replacement. It measures 4.5 inches square and about 1.5 inches high. A picture is attached.
It has 16 gigs of ram and comes with a 500 gig solid state drive. It accepts a two terabyte solid state hard drive which I put in the machine yesterday. I’m confident it is more than capable of holding all of my media and files. The down side is the operating system, Windows 11 Pro, which is able to stream the media to other devices, but lacks the network backup capability I need. It’s something I’ll have to work around, but I will get it figured out.
I’m not kidding myself about the replacement machine. It appears to have a lot of capability, but I am concerned about the very small footprint and its potential to generate heat which is always deadly to a computer. I don’t expect to get 15 years of life out of this little monster, but 3 years is perfectly acceptable. Eventually, I will take the four hard drives out of the old Server and plug them into an external USB Hard Drive Enclosure.
I welcome my new little media server; but man, I never realized how much I depended on the old one to make my life better. It was a investment that paid off over the years as I detailed on this site several times like this post. The Media Server really was a friend. It will be missed.
