Verbatim MediaShare 1 TB Home Network Storage Server 97159
- Share with Friends: Create photo albums & automatically email links to friends and family. Upload photos directly to Facebook & Flickr* (*Premium Service Required)
- Save and Protect: Back up home laptops & save important files directly to MediaShare. Mirror your MediaShare content by simply connecting an external hard drive to the eSATA port
- Access Anywhere: Remotely upload, download & manage files; view photos, play music & watch videos via the internet. Immediately access (locally or remotely) data from your USB device by connecting to one of the USB ports
- Stream Multimedia : Stream music, photos & video through any DLNA compliant device such as a PS3 or XBox360. MediaShare features a high performance 1.2GHz processor for simultaneously playing multimedia content to multiple devices in your home.
- Easy to Use : View and manage your MediaShare data from any internet connection using our intuitive browser-based interface
Product Description
Simply share, store and stream with the Verbatim MediaShare server. The MediaShare offers up to 1 TB of storage and allows you to share photos, save and protect files, stream media and even access your content-from anywhere. Use your MediaShare to create photo albums and send them to friends and family or upload your photos directly to Facebook. Back-up home laptops and automatically save important files directly to your MediaShare so they are in one centralized location. Stream music and photos through Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360 or other DNLA compliant devices. Lastly, quickly upload, download and manage your files via remote access by simply connecting to myverbatim.com from any internet connection…. More >>
Verbatim MediaShare 1 TB Home Network Storage Server 97159
I was excited about this product. I just back from a trip to Greece and wanted something to help me organize my photos and have a way to share them without multiple emails. This looked like a great way to do it.
Set up was fairly easy. Plug the server into my internet router and then the electricty and turn it on. Once stablized then I could set up my laptop. Insert the set up disk and were off. This took about an hour (not bad for all it had to do.)
The issue comes with the uploading of the photos. The photos are stored by date downloaded. So I uploaded each folder. (This was again fast and easy.) But when I created an album for sharing, the album would only accept one file.
Then I tried to import each photo. But windows photo puts them into folders and reuses photo names (primary tag name and a number). Thus when I uploaded the 149 photos, only 46 actually uploaded because of duplicate names.
So now I am renaming all the photos and going to try again!
The following are some other issues that I have found:
1. When setting up an Album for sharing, they ask of at least one email address.
2. It appears that there is no way to upload an address book, so you need to input each email seperately.
3. When it uploads pictures, it does not upload existing tags or captions. So you need to do this a second time.
4. It appears that if a picture moves in the order, the album does not adjust and shows a different picture.
Now that I have unloaded on this, I do think that this has potential and much of the problems can be fixed at Verbatim’s website.
Some of the good things that I see in the product:
1. You have control of the pictures and they are not on a website.
2. You can connect albums to Facebook, which gives you greater control on what is seen.
3. You can password protect your albums and also give expiration dates to the invitations.
4. The slideshow feature puts the captions on the photos.
I like the control features very much and once they fix the album and photo issues, I feel that this will be worth the price and become a 5* product!
Rating: 3 / 5
To start out I am a System Administrator, technology is what I do while at work and when I get home I want something that’s going to be easy to use and that works. I’ve had the Verbatim MediaShare 1tb home network storage server up and running for only a couple days but so far I am very happy with it.
I have used the media server in 3 different roles so far as I try to figure out exactly the right role for this device in my home.
I started out using it as a share point to store files I needed to get access to everywhere. On the side of being a Sys Admin I also fix computers on the side so it’s great having all my files in one location so when I am at a clients house I can connect to the drive and retrieve any files I am needing to fix their computer. The Storage server worked great in this area and it felt very secure, however I seemed to have better performance using my current web storage service I subscribe to so for me this wasn’t the optimal role as most my files are very large. This did work great with smaller files like word documents and spreadsheets.
Next I tried using the media network storage server as an Apple Time Machine backup drive. Previously I was using a local USB drive; the thought of a network storage device was appealing. It didn’t take much to get apple to see the device and prep it to be used as a time machine backup drive, very simple setup. And the response time was pretty snappy when browsing the time machine backup. Granted, i only had a few hours of backups on the drive and I am curious as the backups go from hours to months if the drive will still be as quick, but so far I am impressed. But since I already had an exteranl drive I was using this didn’t seem like the optimal fit.
The last thing I tried is what I think this box will truly be in my house. A media server to share videos. On initial tests I ripped a few DVD’s and put the video files on the media server and did a few tests. First I tried streaming to an Xbox 360 on my network and it had some issues initially connecting however once the connection was established it performed better then I expected. Next I tried to stream to a PC on my network, that to worked perfectly. The third test was the real external test. I fired up my laptop, jumped on my verizon wireless aircard and attempted to stream a movie, at first I wasn’t sure if it was working as designed as the video appeared to buffer for a very long time, however I also noticed I had issues connecting to websites so I disconnected from verizon and reconnected and attempted the stream again, this time it started playing very quickly, I believe this was an issue with the verizon network and not so much the media share server.
overall I am very pleased with this storage server. With my different tests I was able to see how it would work best for me and I think I’m going to use this primarily as a Video streaming server and free up a lot of room on my other computers. This drive operated very quietly and over the last few days hasn’t heated up to the touch as much as I thought it would. I am happy with this and would recommend it for anyone looking for a network storage server. This is a very universal product and for me has plenty of ways to utilize it.
I will mention, performance of your network will determine the quality of the server, time it takes to move file etc. For external access you really need a high speed broadband internet connection. If your connection is slow or unreliable your performance of accessing files externally will be significantly impacted.
Rating: 5 / 5