I recently purchased a 300GB HP MediaVault . I ran the installer in my HP PC which was running Microsoft XP Home edition. I was not able to use the software which came with the bundle as the Home edition does not support networking but it allowed mapping network drives though . I was never able to map the mediavault drive as my computer was not able to see it . I checked the user guide for HP Mediavault and it said that i should disable the firewall when i use the Vault. It was a big surprise to me that a leading PC manufacturer like HP wanted it’s customers to turn off the firewall . Security is compromised these days even with firewalls hence disabling it seemed like a really bad idea to me.
I was using Norton Personal Firewall 2003 as my software firewall . I tried modifying the rules in Norton Personal Firewall 2003 and even though i granted complete access to the hpmediavault server it kept blocking it . The only way i could ever map a drive was when i disabled the firewall. Then I went one step further and uninstalled it. I have comcast cable so i downloaded Mcafee Personal Firewall for free and then i was able to connect without any issues . Mcafee configures the access rules as it allows certain IP addresses ( i believe it is all the machines in my network or connected to my router).
Norton Internet Security 2007 is much better . It did not allow access initially but once i configured the new rules ( It did not configure itself like Mcafee) it followed the rules faithfully .
I would recommend anyone using HP Mediavault to configure their firewall and not to ever disable it as recommended in forums and the user guides.
