Rebuilding N36L - what OS?

GeX · 16 Apr 2015 at 17:45

Hi all.

I have an N36L which acts as my media storage and backup location. I'm overhauling and have just ordered a pair of WD Reds for it. I plan to run them in RAID1.

It is currently running an old LTS release of Ubuntu off an internal 2.5" drive. I need it to be able to act as an Apple TimeMachine backup location and it currently serves shares to the HTPC with Samba.

I've seen that people run Synology's OS on newer microservers, would it work well on one as old as mine?

I've seen modified BIOSs mentioned, mine is stock - should I look into that?

Steveocee · 16 Apr 2015 at 20:17

Xpenology will run great on it and modified bios is only worth a look if you want to use the 5th port at normal sata speeds or want to run windows 8 on it

ANDARIAL · 16 Apr 2015 at 21:10

https://www.avforums.com/threads/hp-n36l-n40l-n54l-microserver-updated-ahci-bios-support.1521657/

Have a look here for info about modded bios
Did mine on a N54L easy and get full speeds on all sata connections

Steveocee · 17 Apr 2015 at 08:25

Shameless plug to my own blog but the bios file is there to download
http://steveocee.co.uk/2014/07/hp-microserver-n54l-n40l-n36l-german-bios-mod-file/

You still need the HP tool to create your USB upgrade stick and I'd advise making 3 upgrade sticks, 2 with stock HP bios (1 in case the mod bios fails and 1 as a backup in case your backup fails) and then a stick with the mod bios on.