No Live Mesh in Windows 8: time to build a NAS.

Windows Live Mesh is a brilliant bit of software, yet it has always been poorly promoted by Microsoft.

Live Mesh seamlessly synchronises folders between multiple PCs, including those of friends you invite to share. You can choose which PCs have which folders and you can also sync up to 5Gb of your content with a cloud storage area – but importantly this is optional. I currently use Live Mesh in three scenarios:

1. Documents: it keeps documents backed up to the cloud, and in sync between my home desktop, laptop and work PC
2. HTPC Media: it keeps photos, music and videos in sync across the HTPCs we have in our kitchen, lounge and bedroom
3. Family Photos: it syncs our photos of the kids over the internet with my parents’ laptop

By distributing and replicating files, Mesh also implicitly offers resilience: if a hard drive needs to be replaced, or a system needs to be rebuilt, the affected PC can be removed, repaired, then added back into the Mesh and it gets all its content back.

It recently emerged that while Windows 8 will work nicely with Windows Live SkyDrive, including 25GB of free cloud storage, PC to PC syncing will be dropped in Windows 8, and Live Mesh will be discontinued.

So before that happens, I need to find new solutions for my three scenarios, plus the resilience issue.

1. Documents

Windows 8’s SkyDrive integration will be fine for documents, and I’ll probably continue to use it. I’ll keep my documents in Live Mesh for now and move them over to SkyDrive when I upgrade to Windows 8.

2. HTPC Media

One of the reasons I decided to use Mesh to distribute media between HTPCs was that they were initially networked using WiFi, which wasn’t capable of streaming content from one box to another quickly enough, but was OK for syncing files between machines at a slower pace.

Following a DIY project last summer, that is no longer the case, and everything is now nicely wired together. I also have the problem that the HTPCs are starting to run out of disk space. So, I’ve decided to build a NAS.

A NAS (Networked Attached Storage) is a box with lots of disk space and a fast network connection which is dedicated to dishing out files to other devices on the network. Once the NAS is in place, the media content I currently sync between PCs will go on there and I can remove my media folders from Live Mesh.

After reading this blog post, I’ve decided to go for an HP ProLiant MicroServer running FreeNAS from a USB flash drive, with four 2TB disks. I’ll set the disks up in a RAID 5 formation which will give me 6TB of capacity. This also offers resilience, as although the files are now only in once place, RAID distributes them across the hard disks, so individual disks can fail and be replaced.

3. Family Photos

Once the NAS is set up, I’ll also shift our photo archive up on to it, then make it available from there via SSH/SFTP which looks pretty easy to set up in FreeNAS. On my parents’ laptop, I’ll remove Live Mesh, and write a simple batch file which uses WinSCP’s Synchronize capability to pull any new photos down from the NAS each time they boot up their laptop. I’ll post something here on my blog when I get this working.

Wii Boxing

Jenny consistently whoops my sorry ass at Boxing on the Wii. Look at the venom in that face..!

Just hoping that we don’t get as excited as these people!

Wii Verdict

8th December was launch day for the Nintendo Wii, and, unlike many people it seems, I got my hands on one from day one. Oxford Street? Far too obvious. Ditto Amazon. The answer was to buy from where gadget-lovers would never usually dare step foot: Comet in Guiseley! While their TVs may be 20% dearer than online, and the terms on their extended warranties enough to make your eyes water, the Wii has a fixed price of £180 so pre-ordering from Comet turned out to be a shrewd move that enough other people hadn’t thought of. Except they had no spare controllers and no more games, but at least I didn’t have to sleep in a tent to get my Wii…

So, what’s the verdict? Well, launch night was a bit disappointing. All it comes with is a composite video cable, which on a modest (these days) 37″ TV makes for a pretty dreadful picture. I had the same with the PS2 a few years ago. The Wii RGB cable which will fix the problem is a further £25. Hmm. And no stock anywhere…

I also had to wait an age to get started, as the first thing it wanted to do was update its system software. That was the longest 45 minutes of my life. You get a new console home and all it wants to do is update itself for 3/4 of an hour…

Next I tried to look at all the old games on the Wii shopping channel… server too busy.

So finally, I got to play on my only game, Wii Sports. And it really is quite something! Crap picture aside, it was very very good fun and surprisingly energetic.

Over the weekend, I took it down to the in-laws’ house and got them into it too – Jen’s dad wants one for his birthday!

So, all in all, 7/10. I need more games to boost this score – I want Zelda, Mario Galaxy and Red Steel at least. At £35 a pop, £30 for the obligatory extra controller and £25 for the must-have RGB cable, it won’t be cheap. Santa are you reading this..?