this is a pretty exciting product that just arrived this is the ASUS TS mini
Windows Home Server so the specs are right here you can see it runs an Intel
atom with 1 gig of RAM it has one 500 gig drive but it's available in up to 2
terabyte configurations so this is a Windows Home Server as I just said and
it supports up to two 3 and 1/2 in drives by default so why don't we start
getting this box open and have a look at it the TS mini actually includes besides
the standard Windows Home Server stuff a couple of unique assus features so oh I
can't believe I even showed you this brown box there's actually a full proper
retail box underneath it that actually like looks good and includes uh probably
more information about it than the bottom one actually it doesn't it
includes zero information about it so you can store share and secure your
digital life now I'm a big fan of Windows Home Server I've been using
Windows Home Server since it was in beta and I'm going to sort of cover a few of
the awesome and unique features about it during this video but there's way way
more it is so customizable you can really do a ton of different stuff with
Windows Home Server software so the first thing we find in the box is your
warranty card addressed to dearest customers we find one Ethernet cable a
power adapter as well as a cable for that and then we have the Windows Home
Server software installation CD so they actually give you a Windows disc that's
pretty nice or they give you a restore CD and they also give you a recovery DVD
oh yeah sorry this is the Windows Home Server installation disc I should know
this this is the PC restore CD so this
is one of the features of Windows Home Server that is really cool it backs up
all your computers overnight every night and then what you do is if you have a
hard drive crash completely die in one of your home PCS you basically just put
in a new hard drive put this disc in your in your DVD drive and then you run
the software off here it takes all the data off the Home Server dumps it onto
the new drive and basically you'd never know that your computer was out uh
here's a server recovery DVD this is actually for recovering the Home Server
to factory default so you can either install manually or you can restore it
to factory default very cool it includes some extra hard drive screws so if you
buy your own hard drives to upgrade the TS mini you will have extra screws
here's a quick start guide let's see what they include in their quick start guide I'm actually curious so they
probably show you you connect it to the Ethernet uh you can't run a Home Server
over Wireless so that's one of the things that they've uh put pointed out
right here is that the Home Server actually has to be hardwired directly to
your router but from there it can back up computers that are connected by wire
or by um or by Wireless it doesn't really matter so you set up the PS mini
now Home Server is never intended to be plugged into a monitor so you actually
administer the Home Server from a home computer you use like a custom remote
desktop connection to plug into it and that is how it's done here they give you
quick instructions on how to install another hard drive on the back uh how to
set up user accounts so with the user accounts you can set um you can set up
to 10 user accounts and you can give certain people access to certain folders
you can limit how much storage can be used by each user you've got all kinds
of great control you can oh this is cool remote access you can set whether each
user has the ability to log into the Home Server from anywhere in the world
sorry my memory card ran out so you can also select um which users can have full
remote access not only to the Home Server but also to any other PC in your
house that's running a remote access capable OS like Windows XP Pro Windows
Vista uh business and up and then
Windows 7 Professional and up so that's a very cool feature you can set up all
of your sharing folders this is another good one uh replication so with every
folder on oh this isn't what it's about well either way replication is a really
good feature with every folder on the Windows Home Server you can actually set
whether it is going to be replicated or not so okay I can talk about this more
later cameraman's telling me to move faster so asso special features these we
definitely need to talk about their web-based management software that allows you to manage the Home Server
their xtor manager that allows you to easily and directly back up synchronized
manage folders on an external USB or esad device so not only on the internal
drives as well as their web storage so they have a free one-year online account
that allows you to back up files from your home server with your internet
connection and store them online so there you go let's actually get the TS
mini open up here and have a look at the
this device now my home server is actually just a custom cobbled together
uh nightmare of Machinery uh it consumes a ton of power it's really loud I locked
it in the closet but this is meant to be more like an appliance that you could
actually store somewhere in your house and have it not look horrible um let's
just take the plastic off here so it's a very Sleek looking thing you've got a
nice glossy black finish on the TS
mini okay let's get all these Plastics
off so you got a bunch of ventilation up here at the top then you got your power
switch which is pretty much um all you'll ever need cuz Home Server
basically runs itself and then I'm just going to take off this uh last piece of
plastic here at the front okay there's your assus Home Server logo you got your
little Windows logo you have activity LEDs for both of your individual hard
drives here on the front as well as a network LED indicator this thing is is
incredibly shiny I'm going to have to be careful not to show the cameraman here I
mean look at this let's do the obligatory finger shot where you can see
exactly how shiny the side of this thing is on the back we find a ton of extra
storage uh inputs so with the TS mini you can have two internal hard drives
and then you can potentially plug in another six external hard drives and
another two eSATA hard drives so if you wanted to have something to either back
up temporarily and then take it away or something just plug plugged in
permanently that sits right on top of the TS mini you've got all of those
different options at your disposal next you've got your gigabit landan Port as
well as your DC power in and a Kensington lock just in case you're
worried about someone stealing your Home Server now the whole point of Windows
Home Server is data security so I'm going to
open this up uh is data security Now what I was about to mention before when
the cameraman so rudely interrupted me was that Windows Home Server has a
replicating feature where you can set folder to safely back up any data on
more than one hard drive so if you got two hard drives installed in the Home
Server or if you have one drive installed and one plugged into the back
you can set it so that no matter what any data that you write to the Home
Server will be stored on at least two of those drives at any given time and it
will actually run those backup checks multiple times daily and that is how you
can make sure that you do not lose any data even in the event that your Home
Server suffers uh a hard drive failure or some other kind of catastrophic crash
and I can vouch for this personally because I've actually had several times
I've had drives in my Home Server die and I have never once lost any of the
data that I was using the backup uh replication software for so I have got
this open now I don't think I'm going to go any further here to show you how to
install a hard drive but I suspect you just kind of remove some of these screws
and it's not too difficult so thank you for checking out my unboxing and first
look at the ASUS TS mini and I hope that
you've enjoyed it don't forget to subscribe to my video blog and I hope to
be doing a followup soon with some of the uh unique assus features that come
with this particular home server unit so the cameraman was complaining I
didn't really take any close looks at the Home Server uh or rather not close
looks we did lots of close looks but we didn't do kind of an overall view of it
so he wanted to get a closer look at the vents up top and there are actually
there must be some kind of a fan under here because uh I can feel air flow yeah
there's two little fans down here I can feel air flow coming up from the bottom
of the Home Server and then um you can
actually see on the bottom here there is a ventilation and then here this is
interesting so you've got the rubber feet here and then you've got kind of a
cutaway so that means that even if you sit the Home Server down on a Surface
there's still lots of room here for the air to come in under the server and then
be pulled up through the top so that you can make sure that your hard drives as
well as your C in there and everything else stays nice and cool and one thing
that I probably didn't emphasize enough in the first video or in the first part
of this video is that there is no display there's no display output the
Home Server is accessed only by remote
desktop connection through the Ethernet port so thank you for checking out my video on the ASUS TS Mini