Good Cheap Server - HP Proliant Microserver 4 BAY - OWNERS THREAD

I was originally trying to install Windows Home Premium SP1 when I was having the issues with the HD drives not being found. Just tried with an original W7 Ultimate install and worked smooth as butter, found the HD drives straight away in order to select the install location.
 
tonym said:
Do you see the drives in the BIOS?
Click to expand...

Yep, saw the HD drive in the BIOS and could select as the primary drive, set the boot order etc. Just Windows Home Premium SP1 couldnt find the HD and prompted for driver, unlike Ultimate (non SP1) which found and presented the HD straight away for selection as install drive.
 
grumpybeard said:
Yep, saw the HD drive in the BIOS and could select as the primary drive, set the boot order etc. Just Windows Home Premium SP1 couldnt find the HD and prompted for driver, unlike Ultimate (non SP1) which found and presented the HD straight away for selection as install drive.
Click to expand...

In advanced ACPI, what's the HPET set to?
 
grumpybeard said:
Yep, saw the HD drive in the BIOS and could select as the primary drive, set the boot order etc. Just Windows Home Premium SP1 couldnt find the HD and prompted for driver, unlike Ultimate (non SP1) which found and presented the HD straight away for selection as install drive.
Click to expand...

I've tried Win 7 Professional both with and without SP1 and it sees the drives in both cases. Was it a non-standard version of Home Premium?
 
Question, With freeNAS, can I start with one hard drive and then add others over time building up the space available? Or do I need the full 4+ Hard drives at once.
 
DiCe! said:
Question, With freeNAS, can I start with one hard drive and then add others over time building up the space available? Or do I need the full 4+ Hard drives at once.
Click to expand...

In general, yes, you can. However, if you're planning on creating a RAID array, ZFS pool, etc., there are probably restrictions. How are you planning on configuring the drives, exactly?

If you're just going to use them as "simple volumes" (each share limited to one drive, not spread over multiple drives), then you can add drives whenever you like.
 
_SBradley_ said:
In general, yes, you can. However, if you're planning on creating a RAID array, ZFS pool, etc., there are probably restrictions. How are you planning on configuring the drives, exactly?

If you're just going to use them as "simple volumes" (each share limited to one drive, not spread over multiple drives), then you can add drives whenever you like.
Click to expand...

I was wanting to RAID if possible, a redundancy of 1 disk, I know NAS's can (drobo) but I think im pushing it with freeNAS...
 
FreeNAS can do all sorts of RAID -- although you'd be better off with ZFS RAID-Z1. I'm no ZFS expert, so maybe someone else can offer specific advice on that. I know it's more flexible than RAID, but can you add hard drives once the pool is created? Or create a new vdev with the new drive, then add that to the pool?

EDIT: I should say that ZFS requires a bunch of RAM. If you were going to go that route, you'd definitely need to upgrade to at least 4 GiB.
 
Hmm. I bought the HD5450 and tried to install it today. The heat sink is towards the wall and will most likely not fit. The description said low profile - MSI HD 5450 1GB is the model. Can anyone with the same card care to say how it fits in their box?

Edit: Also, the pci metal slot things in the back are a pain in the ass to remove. I've unscrewed the screw attached to it but how do I actually get it out? It seems locked from both ways.
 
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Hi all,

I've installed an LSI SAS 3081E-R RAID card into my Microserver, however I'm unable to access the configuration utility.

During the boot process, I'm prompted to press CTRL + C to access the config utility, however the card is not booting into the config utility. Instead it continues with the normal boot priority order.

While the card displays details on how to access the config utility, it also states the card has been "disabled by the user". I'm assuming once I can get into the utility I can enable it and configure as required.

I'm unsure if the "disabled by the user" information is linked to the following, but the card does not appear as a boot option in the HP BIOS.

Has anyone got any suggestions?
 
Converting from a nas to htpc....

I'm in the process of converting my microserver to an htpc, and have hit a small impass.
Here's where i'm up to:

I've stuck in a 5450 (low profile, XFX), and 8GB of ddr3.
No problems there.

I intend to have tha machine running Win 7 + xbmc, and 5x2TB with flexraid for a little bit of data protection.

However, here's my problem:

I don't really want Win 7 on one of the 5 2TB SATA drives.

I've experimented with booting Win 7 from a portable USB HDD (using this guide), and although it works - it seems rather prone to breaking. (whatever system/registry mods it does tend to get undone by certain other programs).

As an alternative I figured I could extract the portable HDD from the USB caddy (it's a SATA drive), and connect it directly to the eSATA port. (I already have the necessary eSATA to SATA cable, and a spare power splitter).

In this configuration the HDD spins up fine, however it is not mentioned anywhere in the bios, or on the POST screen. Nor does it appear in the (f12) boot-up menu.
FreeNAS 7 (OS currently booting from USB stick) doesn't detect it either (though that might just be FreeNAS being....FreeNAS)
Is this normal? or do I have a dodgy eSATA->SATA cable?

Is the microserver even capable of booting from a drive connected to the eSATA port?

If not, would the following work-around be feasible?

1) Boot onto USB key that just contains a boot loader.
2) boot loader on USB key passes boot over to Win 7 OS installed on drive connected via eSATA
 
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TehJumpingJawa said:
I'm in the process of converting my microserver to an htpc, and have hit a small impass.
Here's where i'm up to:

I've stuck in a 5450 (low profile, XFX), and 8GB of ddr3.
No problems there.

I intend to have tha machine running Win 7 + xbmc, and 5x2TB with flexraid for a little bit of data protection.

However, here's my problem:

I don't really want Win 7 on one of the 5 2TB SATA drives.

I've experimented with booting Win 7 from a portable USB HDD (using this guide), and although it works - it seems rather prone to breaking. (whatever system/registry mods it does tend to get undone by certain other programs).

As an alternative I figured I could extract the portable HDD from the USB caddy (it's a SATA drive), and connect it directly to the eSATA port. (I already have the necessary eSATA to SATA cable, and a spare power splitter).

In this configuration the HDD spins up fine, however it is not mentioned anywhere in the bios, or on the POST screen. Nor does it appear in the (f12) boot-up menu.
FreeNAS 7 (OS currently booting from USB stick) doesn't detect it either (though that might just be FreeNAS being....FreeNAS)
Is this normal? or do I have a dodgy eSATA->SATA cable?

Is the microserver even capable of booting from a drive connected to the eSATA port?

If not, would the following work-around be feasible?

1) Boot onto USB key that just contains a boot loader.
2) boot loader on USB key passes boot over to Win 7 OS installed on drive connected via eSATA
Click to expand...

The microserver can be picky about cables, my first cable would'nt work and drive was'nt picked up at all. I hav'nt tried booting of a single drive connected to the esata but one of the drives belonging to the raid 1 array that windows is installed on is connected to the esata and it boots and runs fine I am running the modified bios though. Your only real options are to install windows on a 6th drive, install on the raid array if that's possible with flex raid or run an OS that's capable being run from a USB stick.
 
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