The HP Media Vault MV2120 is a two-bay network-attached-storage device with 500GB of storage and room to expand. It keeps things simple and serves up basic NAS features, including an iTunes server, remote Web access, and scheduled backups. While the device is a snap to set up, we found the bundled software to be intrusive. We were disappointed by the lack of a print server despite the existence of not one but two USB ports. The Media Vault MV2120 trails behind the Synology Disk Station DS107+ in terms of features and speed. Also, Hewlett-Packard's Media Vault ships with 500GB of storage for roughly the same price as the empty Synology enclosure while offering a second drive bay for data expansion. Priced at $300 for 500GB of storage, the Media Vault MV2120 delivers good value per gigabyte ($0.60 per GB). By focusing on a few essential features, the drive is easy to set up and use. Its affordability coupled with simplicity makes the HP Media Vault MV2120 an attractive choice for novice home users. However, keep shopping if you need a NAS device with the capability to share a printer across your network.

1. Hp Media Vault Drivers

Design
The MV2120 is solid and relatively compact for a dual-bay NAS device; however, it's nowhere near as small as Buffalo's LinkStation Mini. Blue LED lights glow on the front of the device to indicate power, networking, and hard-drive status. Each bay also has a blue light that shines when there's a hard drive installed.

The device has two USB ports, one on the front and the other on the back, that can be used to add external hard drives to increase the storage space or to back up the content on the device. We tried a few external hard drives, and they worked very well. The USB ports were also able to power the bus-powered external hard drives.

Installation disk or down laod HP Data Vault x510 ‎09-21. Connector software installation disk, and disk to restore pc from server. And working with no issues. This was one of the first posts on google. So hopefully this can reach someone in need. Software/Recovery Media ISOS can be found in the link below. HP Media Vault - PC Client Software Installation Disc Version 2 - Image File Drivers free download. File Szie: 83.4 MB OS:32 This updated PC Client Installation CD is recommended for all HP Media Vault users, regardless if you plan to migrate to Microsoft's Vista operating system or not. This is an ISO image of the installation CD. Download the latest software & drivers for your HP MV2120 Media Vault.

The MV2120 only supports write and read on external drives formatted in the FAT32 file system; drives formatted in NTFS can only be read. If you want to back up the contents of the MV2120 to an external hard drive, the USB drive needs to be formatted in the EXT3 file system (Linux). Note that once you format an external drive in EXT3, Windows PCs or Macs will no longer recognize it.

The Media Vault MV2120 ships with a single 3.5-inch 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive. This hard drive is screwed in, but it is still user-changeable. Unfortunately, the operating system of the MV2120 is hosted on this hard drive, which means you will need to download a utility from HP to rebuild the whole system should you replace the drive. It would be much less of an hassle if HP had installed the device's operating system on a ROM chip, as is done in the Synology DS107+ or many other NAS devices we've reviewed.

The second hard-drive bay on the other hand is very flexible. It can take a 3.5-inch SATA hard drive of any capacity and it is even hot-swappable, meaning you can replace it without having to turn off the device. However, it comes with a plastic tray that feels flimsy and cheap. Nonetheless, it does its job well as long as you are gentle with it. Once the second hard drive is installed, you have the option of combining it with the fixed one in a RAID 1 (there's no option for RAID 0) configuration or having it work as a second volume. In either case, the drive will need to be formatted in EXT3. However, make sure you know which configuration you want, because once you have decided to go with the RAID 1, the MV2120 doesn't offer any easy way to change it.

Features
It's very easy to set up the Media Vault MV2120. The bundled CD contains the Media Vault Monitor application that helps your computer detect NAS drives on the network and the Media Vault Control Center application for accessing the MV2120's main features. Among other things, the software allows for quick access to the MV2120's default shared folders, such as Documents, Music, Photos, and its main functions such as backup (the MV2120 comes with NTI Shadow backup software to support its backup function), Photo Webshare, and iTunes server.

We do have one complaint about the installation process: HP automatically sets Media Vault Monitor and HP Update to launch each time you start the computer. There's no option to disable this within the software and we didn't find any reason for it to automatically start up. The MV2120 ran just fine without the software running. During our test, more than once the HP Update popped up suggesting that we run an update, when we did, there was no update to be found.

Hp Media Vault Drivers

The HP Media Vault MV2120's backup feature is flexible. You can choose to back up your computer's important files (My Documents, My Music, My Picture, and so on) or back up any selected folders from a computer to the MV2120. You can also back up the NAS itself onto a USB external hard drive. Like most other backup solutions, you can do the backups immediately or schedule it. MV2120 even lets you choose to back up files when they change and keep multiple versions of the files. Overall, we found the backup function very through and convenient.

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Despite its consumer-friendly name, the HP Media Vault is essentially a network-attached storage (NAS) drive with media-streaming capabilities. The drive is available in two capacities: the 300GB Media Vault mv2010 costs $380, and the 500GB mv2020 costs $550. We tested the mv2020 model. Both drives ship with a single hard drive and an empty bay to add a second drive for more capacity or a RAID 1 array. The Media Vault can stream audio and video to any UPnP-compliant digital media adapter and comes with backup and restore software, a pre-installed full-length movie, and two free movie downloads from CinemaNow. Though both Media Vault models represent a reasonable per-gigabyte price, the Buffalo TeraStation Home Server is slightly less expensive per GB, with a 1TB drive retailing for about $900, and there are larger sizes available. Still, since the HP Media Vault lets you choose what drive to put in the second bay, you could easily create a 1TB drive for less than $900 by finding a good deal on a hard drive. And even better, the HP Media Vault is quick with data transfers, making it an excellent option for the networked home user with tons of digital data and the desire to share it.

The silver-and-black Media Vault looks a lot like HP's own Slimline desktops. Its design is spare: on the front is a series of lights for power, network connection, and disk activity, and a single USB 2.0 port. A black-plastic door conceals the empty drive bay, and a lone power button graces the bottom of the device's face. On the back are two additional USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and a power port. The built-in print server lets you network any compliant printer using the USB ports--as many as three printers. Alternatively, you can use the USB ports to attach additional external hard drives.

You can add a second SATA drive to the empty drive bay--IDE drives are not supported--to increase your capacity or to set up a RAID 1 array. RAID 1 simply copies what's saved to the first drive to the second, so you have redundancy but not increased write-speed. Should one drive fail, you have everything copied onto the second drive. Keep in mind, though, file errors and bugs are also copied, so while RAID 1 is better than nothing, it's not the most secure solution either. (RAID 1 also reduces your overall capacity.) The Buffalo TeraStation Home Server offers RAID 5 capability, which is better for data security, though transfer times take a hit. The maximum capacity for the Media Vault, including secondary SATA drives and external USB hard drives, is 1.2TB.

Installing the Media Vault is a simple process: Plug the drive in and connect it to one of your router's LAN ports using an Ethernet cable. Power it up and wait to see that the power and network lights are properly lit. Then install the backup and restore software and the Media Vault utility from the included CD. During the installation process, you'll be prompted to map a drive letter to each of the shared folders on the Media Vault. (If you choose to skip this step, you can also map the drives later using Windows XP.) There are a couple of things to keep in mind for a successful installation. First, the DHCP server on your router needs to be enabled. Second, you may need to turn off any software firewalls on your PC. HP's support documentation indicates a known problem with Norton's firewall, but we ran into the same problem using a PC-cillin firewall. We turned off the software firewall to finish installation, then turned it back on once we were done. With the PC-cillin firewall turned on, the Media Vault utility couldn't find the drive again, although we were still able to access it because we had mapped the folders on the drive. In order to continue using the MV utility, we had to leave the PC-cillin firewall off (though our router's firewall was still up and running).

Once the Media Vault is installed, you can access it a couple of different ways. If you chose to map the drives, you'll find the mapped drives under Network Drives in My Computer. Alternately, you can double-click the Media Vault utility icon on your desktop, and click the Start Browsing Your HP Media Vault link. Each PC on your network should be able to see the Media Vault folders on the network. You can either manually map the folders on each PC or install the MV utility. The Media Vault comes with four preset folders: Backup, FileShare, MediaShare, and CinemaNow. You can rename or delete any of these folders and add any number of additional folders and subfolders, but HP warns against changing the names of the preset folders if you want to use them as HP intends. The Backup folder is where file/folder and disk backups are stored. FileShare is intended for any files you want to share across your network. MediaShare is a repository for audio, video, or picture files. (More on CinemaNow later.)

Using the MV configuration utility, you can set backups, change user permissions, format disks, set up a mirror, and change network settings, among other options. As the administrator, you can determine permissions for each user on the network: they can have access to all, some, or none of the folders, as well as read-only or read/write access. For example, it would probably be prudent to not give your less tech-savvy family members access to backup files, lest they be deleted. Using the config utility, you can also change features of each folder; for example, whether the contents of a folder can be streamed. Only audio, video, and picture files can be streamed, which is why HP recommends keeping all of that content in the MediaShare folder.