Acer Aspire easyStore H340

New life for the Acer Aspire easyStore H340

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Acer H340 Windows Home Server (WHS) – circa 2011

Model: AH340-UA230N

Feature Description
Processor/Cache Intel® Atom™ Processor 230 (1.6 Ghz) with Intel® 945GC Express Chipset + ICH7R
BIOS 256 MB flash ROM
Memory 2 GB DDR2 667MHz unbuffered SDRAM
Device Bays Up to 4 3.5″ hot-swappable SATA HDDs
Expansion Slot PCI-express 4x
Video Requires a cable
Network Interface Controller Gigabit Ethernet
Floppy/CD-ROM Drive None
Expansion Slots None
I/O Connections Front – 1 USB 2.0 port
Rear – 1 RJ-45 LAN port, 4 USB 2.0 ports, 1 e-SATA port, 1 recovery/reset pinhole
Power Supply 200 W, 100-240 V AC
Operating Systems Microsoft® Windows® Home Server
Network Controller Gigabit (10/100/1000) Marvell Yukon 88E8071
Embedded Memory SMI 256
Chassis Specifications Height: 8.34″ (212mm)
Width: 7.87″ (200mm)
Depth: 7.08″ (180mm)
Approximate Weight: 9.9 pounds (4.5Kg, without HDD)
Regulatory Compliance Nemko (CB & Bauart), MET, CE, FCC, BSMI, CCC, VCCI

 

This could have been something – like all products from Microsoft – they start of with a big bang of excitement – and in some thing revolutionary (hear me out) and then they stop development.

Wait.. before anyone thinks I’m a fanboy – my background is in AIX and Solaris operating systems, but give me a break they don’t make consumer hardware.

The other issue is there are so many option in the Linux/*nix distro’s. I’m also getting tired of falling in love with a distro only to see it fall apart as ego’s and politics fall in.

So why WHS?

  • It backed up images of MS system (Windows 7 – no issues) and would restore it.
    • bit block backup
  • Streaming video with codec
    • Did I mention streaming video?
  • DNLA setup
  • Simple Client interface for users to access shared resources
  • MS Server 2003
    • Easy to configure
  • $299 for a bare system with 4 cages

The bad

  • Claims of software RAID
    • Duplication is not RAID – WTF?
      • It’s also not a backup… Well, I guess marketing could…
    • Primary OS on a Hard drive – WTF?!?
  • Windows 2003 – lots of functionality reduced on an atom processor
    • Not really a con I guess it is for “home” use
  • 2 GB ram – really?
    • 64Bit processor and the motherboard is limited 🙁
  • Duplication raid – hello? – Software Raid is built in to Windows 2003 server – Just sayin’
    • why re-invent a fracked up version of duplication with a flat file database?
      • There is virtually no real way to recover from a corrupt file

Even with the bad listed above it fit my needs. I could have family members systems backed up at night and restore a full image if needed; I could stream video to my Sony PS3 without any issues with any container; Windows Server 2003 is pretty stable in the background.

All and all it had promise. I was even able to bridge through DHCP. for VOIP access for my cicso phone. In my view it was just too easy to setup.

You can say the “unraid” approach is somewhat flattery to LimeTech…  At the same time I can see the community laughing as it really didn’t execute what was on paper.

Anyway, time to move on.

Resources to read:

Keep in mind FreeNAS current distro will not fit in the onboard 256M memory. Nas4Free on the other hand will.

Next post will be on setup since the material is now pretty weak.

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