To help you better understand the Mediaserver technology, the following list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) has been provided.

In the event that you do not find the information you seek in this FAQ or in the User Guide, please check our Support page for any other options.

1. Why do I need so much storage space?
Your Mediaserver is designed to allow a home user to accumulate digital media in the form of photos, music, and video collected over a lifetime. Old photos may be scanned in and mixed with images from digital cameras. Analog videos may be digitally captured and saved to the Mediaserver. Digital Video Cameras can be used to simply transfer your video to the computer. In this way, a lifetime of memories can be captured and stored on your Mediaserver.


2. What does 'useable storage' mean?
Throughout this FAQ and other parts of the Mediaserver User Guide, you will read about 'useable storage'.  When a Mediaserver is manufactured, it contains many disk drives with a total 'raw' storage capacity determined by multiplying the number of drives by the capacity of each drive. Although there are relatively small amounts of drive space that are unusable due to the media, manufacturing process, and the characteristics of the drive itself, there is significantly more space reserved for providing RAID redundancy of the data. RAID provides protection in the event that a single disk drive fails. Because of the RAID5 architecture implemented on your Mediaserver, there is about a 20% reduction in the total useable space, although the consumer is receiving the benefits of that unusable space for data protection. A one terabyte Mediaserver will provide approximately 800 gigabytes of useable storage, with the remaining 200 gigabytes used for redundancy and data protection.


3. Why do I need to store my media on a Mediaserver?
The Mediaserver allows you to quickly access media like never before. Where you once had to spend considerable effort digging through shoe boxes for photos and tapes, assembling slides for a slide show, or creating music tracks with a sequence of your favorite songs, you can now produce slideshows with background music with relatively minimal effort. You are more likely to watch family videos and slideshows more often because of the convenience of the Mediaserver. In addition, as technology changes over the years, you can back your media up to the different storage devices as they become standard. For instance, you may have stored your family photos and video to CDRW media, but now, you can back your media up onto DVDRW media. In this way, you can easily keep a lifetime of personal treasures that can be passed on to future generations. Storing your digital media on the server helps protect your media from loss or damage. How often have you scratched an audio CD during normal use? With the Mediaserver, you can safely store your original media away while you play the music from the server.


4. Isn't it illegal to copy my CDs, DVDs, and Tapes?
It is not necessarily illegal to copy CDs, DVDs, and Tapes for your own personal use. You should make yourself aware of the rights provided you by the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and "fair use" rules. Whether you live inside or outside the U.S., you should become familiar with your local laws. Generally, in the U.S., it may be illegal to bypass copyright protection methods, such as encryption.  Home Media Storage assumes no liability for the misuse of its products and encourages its customers to adhere to all laws governing copyrighted media. The consumer has the sole responsibility of determining the legality of copying media or storing media on the Mediaserver.


5. How much space does a music CD require?
There are many different methods for copying music tracks to your Mediaserver, however, two methods are the most common. The first method requires compressing the music into an MP3 data file while copying the music track and the second method is to perform an exact copy of each music track. With the first method, there are many different quality adjustments available to the person while converting (ripping) the CD into MP3 files. The overall file size for each track is determined by the selection of these quality factors. The primary quality factor is called 'bit rate'. The higher the bit rate, the better the potential quality of the newly compressed audio file. A typical music file is between 2 and 20 megabytes depending on the length of the source music track and using high quality variable bit rate encoding. For high quality MP3s consuming about 10 megabytes per song, you can store about 100,000 songs per terabyte of useable storage. For those people targeting personal audio devices that play MP3s, you can decrease the bit rate during ripping so that the songs take much less storage space and therefore you can store many more songs per terabyte of storage.


6. How much space does a DVD require?
A typical DVD contains between 4 and 8 gigabytes of data. DVDRW media typically holds up to 4.8 gigabytes of data while commercial DVDs can store more than 7 gigabytes. You should be able to store between 125 and 250 DVDs per terabyte of useable storage space.


7. How much space does a digital photo require?
It depends on the camera and the type of image compression used. A typical 3 megapixel camera storing at its best quality using JPEG compression will require about 1 megabyte per picture. With this quality setting you can store about 1,000,000 (one million) photos per terabyte of useable storage space.


8. How much space does home video require?
A home video that is converted to DVD quality MPEG2 format will be encoded at a 3 to 7 megabits per second bit rate. At that bit rate, a one hour video will require 3600 seconds per hour, times 5 megabits per second equaling 18,000 megabits per hour. Divide this by 8 to convert to megabytes per hour: 18,000 / 8 = 2250 megabytes per hour of video. 1000 megabytes is a gigabyte so you need about 2.25 gigabytes per hour of video. This is consistent with DVD movies which are about 4 to 8 gigabytes for a 2 to 3 hour movie. You should be able to store about 450 hours of high quality video per terabyte of useable storage space. There are many other video compression codecs available that produce very good quality video at lower bit rates so you can store more video on less disk space, however, most DVD players and computers can easily play back standard MPEG2 files formatted for DVD. The MPEG2 video compression technology is used in the majority of commercially produced movie DVDs.


9. How do I back up my Mediaserver
Even though the Mediaserver utilizes RAID technology to protect your data in the event that a single disk drive fails, there are conditions which may cause sever damage to the server, such as a flood or fire, and all of your data can be lost unless a back-up is made. (It is a good idea to store your back-up in an off-site location that is safe from a house fire or local flood). To back up your data, you can use a PC to burn a collection of CDRW or DVDRW media. DVDRW media is preferable since the single disk capacity is so much larger than that of a CDRW. For files which are already contained on a source disk, such as Audio CDs and Software Disks, you can keep these CDs in a safe place in the event that you have to restore the data back to a replacement Mediaserver. This way you only have to back-up data that is not already available on other media (Tape, CD, DVD) that you possess. Your home videos typically do not change over time, so creating a one time DVD for each of your videos should be good enough. Photos are similar. Create data DVDs with all of your original photos, but periodically back up photos that you have enhanced or changed. The rest of your data should be treated in similar fashion. Data that changes frequently should be backed-up frequently. For frequent data back-ups, you might consider purchasing a tape drive and attaching it to a PC on your home network. A back-up can then be scheduled when there is very little or no activity on your home network.


10. How do I know if everything is OK on my Mediaserver
Your Mediaserver is designed to operate even if a single disk drive fails. You will probably not notice a drive failure unless you are monitoring the daily health reports emailed to you from your Mediaserver. That is why it is so important to review the daily health reports.


11. What does this Acronym mean?



LAN	Local Area Network. The network at your home or office with printers, PCs and servers all connected by wired or wireless network connections
WAN	Wide Area Network. This is typically the internet. Millions of computers attached to the internet are accessible to computers on your LAN when your LAN has a connection (or a gateway) to the internet. Many people have DSL or Cable Modem connections to the internet. This connection creates access to a WAN.
NAS	Network Attached Storage. A Mediaserver may be considered a NAS device since it is primarily a mass storage device accessed via your LAN.
TB	Terabyte. 1 terabyte is a thousand gigabytes, a million megabytes, a billion kilobytes, and a about a trillion bytes.
GB	Gigabyte. 1 gigabyte is a thousand megabytes, a million kilobytes, and a about a billion bytes.
MB	Megabyte. 1 megabyte is a thousand kilobytes, and about a million bytes.
KB	Kilobyte. 1 kilobyte is 1024  bytes
HMS	Home Media Storage. A company producing fine products for your home network.
DHCP	Dynamic Host Control Protocol. This protocol is used for assigning IP addresses to computers on a local area network.
IP	Internet Protocol. This is how data is packaged and controlled for transmission on a computer network.
RAID	Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Redundancy is what makes that group of disks reliable. If any single disk fails, the data will not be lost.
DVI	Digital Visual Interface. Many computers and HDTV displays have digital connectors for connecting a video display to a video source. Many PCs have a DVI output connector that you can then connect the PC to the input of your HDTV. Your HDTV then becomes a computer monitor so you can watch computer or internet based videos and listen to music or surf the web.
HDMI	High Definition Multimedia Interface. This type of connector is popular on HDTV sets and is becoming more common on home entertainment system components. Basically, it is a cabling system for connecting A/V devices together. Some computers are now equipped with an HDMI output so that you can connect your PC to an HDTV. Your HDTV then becomes a computer monitor so you can watch computer or internet based videos and listen to music or surf the web.