I'm bringing back to life an old Microserver that I failed to turn into
a NAS a while ago. It looks like it might be a Gen7, and I have it more
or less up and running Ubuntu 20.04.4. It has a couple of 3TB drives in
it which should be fine for my present needs once I get it on my LAN,
but (obviously) booting will speed up with a little SSD as the boot drive.
I've got the serial number off the back (5C7228P4F2) and the PID
(658553-421) but the only HP "model lookup" links that I have been able
to find are ancient, and no longer working.
Unusually, the Crucial site is no help.
I'm guessing I should be able to fit a SATA SSD easily enough, but warnings/suggestions would be very welcome!
On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 5:34:50 PM UTC+1, newshound wrote:
I'm bringing back to life an old Microserver that I failed to turn intoAFAIK it is trivial to fit an SSD to any generation of Microserver. Any particular reason you think there might be a problem?
a NAS a while ago. It looks like it might be a Gen7, and I have it more
or less up and running Ubuntu 20.04.4. It has a couple of 3TB drives in
it which should be fine for my present needs once I get it on my LAN,
but (obviously) booting will speed up with a little SSD as the boot drive. >>
I've got the serial number off the back (5C7228P4F2) and the PID
(658553-421) but the only HP "model lookup" links that I have been able
to find are ancient, and no longer working.
Unusually, the Crucial site is no help.
I'm guessing I should be able to fit a SATA SSD easily enough, but
warnings/suggestions would be very welcome!
On an earlier generation than yours I just took the Sata port that was intended for the CD-ROM drive, and put an SSD on the end of the cable.
I can't remember what I did for power, there might have been a
Molex to SATA power cable adapter involved.
No particular BIOS issues that I can recall. I was also running Ubuntu, although earlier than 20.
I have also, again on the earlier Microservers, booted from an
SSD 'Disk On Module', which fitted directly into the SATA socket on
the baseboard.
On 19/04/2022 18:04, jkn wrote:
On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 5:34:50 PM UTC+1, newshound wrote:
I'm bringing back to life an old Microserver that I failed to turn intoAFAIK it is trivial to fit an SSD to any generation of Microserver. Any particular reason you think there might be a problem?
a NAS a while ago. It looks like it might be a Gen7, and I have it more
or less up and running Ubuntu 20.04.4. It has a couple of 3TB drives in
it which should be fine for my present needs once I get it on my LAN,
but (obviously) booting will speed up with a little SSD as the boot drive. >>
I've got the serial number off the back (5C7228P4F2) and the PID
(658553-421) but the only HP "model lookup" links that I have been able
to find are ancient, and no longer working.
Unusually, the Crucial site is no help.
I'm guessing I should be able to fit a SATA SSD easily enough, but
warnings/suggestions would be very welcome!
On an earlier generation than yours I just took the Sata port that was intended for the CD-ROM drive, and put an SSD on the end of the cable.
I can't remember what I did for power, there might have been a
Molex to SATA power cable adapter involved.
No particular BIOS issues that I can recall. I was also running Ubuntu, although earlier than 20.
I have also, again on the earlier Microservers, booted from anThanks, I just wanted to check that I was not missing something before shelling out some cash. I'm always a bit more nervous about
SSD 'Disk On Module', which fitted directly into the SATA socket on
the baseboard.
semiconductor memory than spinning rust, which is why sites like Crucial
give me comfort.
One of the web sources suggested that you couldn't boot from the optical drive connector. Anyway I have ordered a small Samsung SATA so I guess I
will need to have a play.
Thanks, I just wanted to check that I was not missing something before shelling out some cash. I'm always a bit more nervous about
semiconductor memory than spinning rust, which is why sites like Crucial
give me comfort.
One of the web sources suggested that you couldn't boot from the optical drive connector. Anyway I have ordered a small Samsung SATA so I guess I
will need to have a play.
I'm guessing I should be able to fit a SATA SSD easily enough, but warnings/suggestions would be very welcome!
newshound <sradcliffe544@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks, I just wanted to check that I was not missing something before
shelling out some cash. I'm always a bit more nervous about
semiconductor memory than spinning rust, which is why sites like Crucial
give me comfort.
One of the web sources suggested that you couldn't boot from the optical
drive connector. Anyway I have ordered a small Samsung SATA so I guess I
will need to have a play.
As it happens I (very) dusted off my N36L yesterday, installed Ubuntu 22.04 and it's chugging along with 4 HDD nicely. The desktop actually worked
fine, although slowly, in 1GB RAM (which is what happened to be in there).
On these, there was a workaround for Windows XP. XP had no AHCI drivers out of the box, so the optical drive port presents as a PATA disc so XP can boot from it. There was a BIOS hack to enable the option that allows configuring that port as AHCI like the others, which can probably still be found on a forum somewhere.
Linux shouldn't care, although there might be a small performance downside from pretending to be PATA - but it may not matter once Linux has control. I'm pretty sure the optical drive port should be fine to boot from either way.
I had previously done the BIOS hack on this one and all the ports are configured as AHCI. However to allow fitting a fifth SATA disc I had previously installed a SATA to USB adapter and hung the DVD off that, going to the internal USB port, freeing up the fifth SATA port. Since the DVD didn't get used much and wasn't very quick, that was fine. I have unhitched that setup for now and just have 4 HDD, the SATA DVD and a USB stick as the boot drive - I'd use a spare SATA SSD but don't have one handy at the
moment.
Theo
newshound <sradcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks, I just wanted to check that I was not missing something before shelling out some cash. I'm always a bit more nervous about
semiconductor memory than spinning rust, which is why sites like Crucial give me comfort.
One of the web sources suggested that you couldn't boot from the optical drive connector. Anyway I have ordered a small Samsung SATA so I guess I will need to have a play.As it happens I (very) dusted off my N36L yesterday, installed Ubuntu 22.04 and it's chugging along with 4 HDD nicely. The desktop actually worked
fine, although slowly, in 1GB RAM (which is what happened to be in there).
On these, there was a workaround for Windows XP. XP had no AHCI drivers out of the box, so the optical drive port presents as a PATA disc so XP can boot from it. There was a BIOS hack to enable the option that allows configuring that port as AHCI like the others, which can probably still be found on a forum somewhere.
That rings a bell ... I might have done the BIOS HACK as well, even though (as you say) Linux wouldn't have needed it.
Sysop: | Keyop |
---|---|
Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
Users: | 415 |
Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
Uptime: | 22:26:36 |
Calls: | 8,717 |
Calls today: | 6 |
Files: | 13,273 |
Messages: | 5,954,792 |