HP MediaSmart and Apple Support

This post is off topic but I thought it would be interesting to a large audience. I have had a HP MediaSmart 470 home server for about a year. I have enjoyed it was a file server for my home network and have been able to stream music and video to my PS3 seamlessly from it. It also serves as a nice print sharing server as well. I have been able to easily upgrade the RAM on the system from 512MB to 2GB and easily add a few TB's to its storage capacity. I have not used the other features of it such as photo sharing or page hosting. One feature I had not used at all was the system back up feature. Most of my home systems are Apples so I never had the need for a windows backup feature. About six months after I bought my HP MediaSmart, HP announced the feature on their new MediaSmarts would support Apple Time Machine backups. I was excited but disappointed with this new feature because I just bought mine and wondered if I should go get a new one just to have the Time Machine back up feature. I could not justify this purchase so I searched the forums and web for the support of a MediaSmart backward compatibility for about three months with no avail. About a week ago I stumbled across the MediaSmart support page and noticed a link to the download of the MediaSmart client support for OS X. The software for the client can be downloaded below followed by the installation instruction link.

OS X Client

Installation Intructions

Installing this client is pretty straight forward. By default with the older HP MediaSmart server the Time Machine backup feature won't work. It will complain about not having a "MAC" folder on the server. This is easily fixed by creating a "MAC" folder in the root share folder of the MediaSmart server. The folder layout should look like the figure below:



Once this folder is created you can open up the Time Machine preferences on your Mac and backup to the HP MediaSmart Server. I have two Mac systems backing up to the MediaSmart and it has worked well so far. I would recommend the HP MediaSmart to anyone looking for a fileshare, printshare, or backup solution for their home network.