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HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L Owner's Thread *Part 3*

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Old 05-06-2012, 4:35 PM   #91
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I'm looking at setting up RAID 5 with win7 software but would like to know once the array has been created can i add more disk or change for a bigger capacity disk?
if not what 3rd party software can i use with win 7 to be able to expand my array?

I know of drivepool but i think its only for WHS2011?

Many Thanks
 
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Old 05-06-2012, 7:08 PM   #92
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I have 2GB RAM stick available for purchase that I've just pulled out of my new N40L, if anyone is looking to add memory.
 
Old 05-06-2012, 8:20 PM   #93
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How long have you had it?

I assume you have installed different memory?

just out of curiosity have you noticed any performance gain with different memory?
I've had the server for about a month, but swapped out the RAM immediately after testing for 8GB of non-ECC Corsair as I needed the extra for various Virtual Machines I would be running.

Although I haven't benchmarked either configuration, I imagine any difference in performance caused by branding/timing is negligible, the board can only take up to DDR3 1333MHz sticks.
 
Old 05-06-2012, 9:23 PM   #94
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If you wan to stay within forum rules then BaileyBob can started a wanted thread and you can reply to it and go from there
 
Old 06-06-2012, 11:59 AM   #95
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Getting my N40L + WHS 2011 tomorrow

Going to be putting in 3x2TB and was thinking of disk pooling (Only going to be films, TV, music so don't really care for backups as I have my important stuff in the clouds).
What do people recommend Drive Bender or DrivePool?

Anti-Virus? Do people run any on WHS? Does Windows Security Essentials work?

Is it best to put the 250GB in the top optical tray first instead of later when I get another hard drive from the cashback? Easy to do?

Last edited by nerner; 06-06-2012 at 12:12 PM.
 
Old 06-06-2012, 12:25 PM   #96
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I've just joined the N40L club myself after my trusty old QNAP TS 109 II HD died recently resulting in me loosing 80% of my movie content (Yes I know I only have myself to blame for not backing up my data) So it's spurned me on to get a more resilient set-up and seeing the cash back offer it was an offer to good to resist.

I've had the N40L and WHS 2011 + 8Gb of ram since Saturday but I can't install anything just yet. I'm waiting for a Molex to Sata power cable and extra Sata cable plus a 5.25" to 3.5" bay adapter to turn up so I can relocate the supplied 250Gb drive to the ODD bay (due Friday hopefully) to use as the OS drive. I've got a spare 1TB drive I'm going to use for now for storage but intend to use 3x 2TB drives when the prices come down a bit more.

I'm still undecided whether to go with Raid 5 via WHS or use a 3rd party solution like FlexRaid when I do eventually have the drives available. Either way I'm looking forward to getting into the build at the weekend

Last edited by RockSteddyEddie; 06-06-2012 at 12:31 PM.
 
Old 06-06-2012, 12:35 PM   #97
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Going to be putting in 3x2TB and was thinking of disk pooling (Only going to be films, TV, music so don't really care for backups as I have my important stuff in the clouds).
What do people recommend Drive Bender or DrivePool?
If you're not concerned with data redundancy, then you could use the RAID 0 built into WHS 2011 to make the 3 x 2TB into a singe 6TB volume. The only reason to use a 3rd party drive pooling solution would be the ability to expand/reduce the pool (once you've set up a RAID array under WHS it's fixed, you can't grow or shrink it). Some 3rd party solutions also allow individual drive spin-up/spin-down where in a WHS RAID array all the disks need to spin-up/down together. This can help with power saving.

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Anti-Virus? Do people run any on WHS? Does Windows Security Essentials work?
Security Essentials doesn't run under WHS 2011. However, as long as you just use the box as a server/filestore and don't browse the internet on it you shouldn't need to have an AV package running on it. Providing of course, all other machines on your network that do web browsing do have an AV installed.

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Is it best to put the 250GB in the top optical tray first instead of later when I get another hard drive from the cashback? Easy to do?
I'd suggest moving the drive before installing WHS 2011. It's very easy to do (much easier than fitting extra memory).
 
Old 06-06-2012, 12:46 PM   #98
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I'd be interested although would prefer you to post first due to your low post count and itrader rating and I'll pay on receipt. Let me know what you think and I'll start a wanted thread and drop you a link to it
Desmo,

Fair enough PM me your address and I will get it send to you ASAP.

Cheers...
 
Old 06-06-2012, 12:46 PM   #99
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If you're not concerned with data redundancy, then you could use the RAID 0 built into WHS 2011 to make the 3 x 2TB into a singe 6TB volume. The only reason to use a 3rd party drive pooling solution would be the ability to expand/reduce the pool (once you've set up a RAID array under WHS it's fixed, you can't grow or shrink it). Some 3rd party solutions also allow individual drive spin-up/spin-down where in a WHS RAID array all the disks need to spin-up/down together. This can help with power saving.
Yer, I wanted to be able to remove a drive or add drives in the future. TBH I will most likely be putting in 2x2TB to start off with and get things up and running and have a little play with everything first.
I guess I could just trial them both and see what's different between the two.

All I'm going to need is a sata cable to move the drive from the drive bays to the optical bay right?
 
Old 06-06-2012, 12:48 PM   #100
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Hi all.. I have the original 2MB RAM pulled out from the N40L which I bought recently. As per Threebie 3 above, I would like to sell at £12 including delivery in the UK.

Hope this is ok and thanks.
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I'd be interested although would prefer you to post first due to your low post count and itrader rating and I'll pay on receipt. Let me know what you think and I'll start a wanted thread and drop you a link to it
Quote:
Originally Posted by ah_heng View Post
Desmo,

Fair enough PM me your address and I will get it send to you ASAP.

Cheers...
Gents, can you please use the classifieds, if you do any deals outside of there you will receive no help from the moderators if anything goes wrong.

Thanks.
 
Old 06-06-2012, 12:51 PM   #101
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Gents, can you please use the classifieds, if you do any deals outside of there you will receive no help from the moderators if anything goes wrong.

Thanks.
Alrite....
 
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Old 06-06-2012, 12:55 PM   #102
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Was going to Iccz

Will make a wanted ad later on and let you know.
 
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Old 06-06-2012, 2:50 PM   #103
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Hi, can anyone tell me whether it is normal to get the PS3 picking up 2 WHS11 media servers, one referring to the Admin account and the other being the name of the server itself?

Just not sure it normal and not sure how to remove the admin one?

I'm only running one microserver btw.

Thanks
 
Old 06-06-2012, 2:54 PM   #104
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Hi, can anyone tell me whether it is normal to get the PS3 picking up 2 WHS11 media servers, one referring to the Admin account and the other being the name of the server itself?

Just not sure it normal and not sure how to remove the admin one?

I'm only running one microserver btw.

Thanks
Are you running any additional media server add ins? Mine did this with my Xbox but it was picking up my add in and the native server in whs, I just unshared the files in whs and it disappeared
 
Old 06-06-2012, 2:58 PM   #105
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Not that I am aware of....I didn't know WHS11 included a media server function lol, so one of the first things I did after installing OS from USB was to install ps3 media server. It wasnt until I tested that that I saw the additional entries for WHS.

I could reinstall everything I guess, as I'm waiting for my cashback to buy additional drives, so at the moment its not doing much - just been messing about with it. Will do that, unless someone knows how to remove one instance......
 
Old 06-06-2012, 3:23 PM   #106
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All I'm going to need is a sata cable to move the drive from the drive bays to the optical bay right?
I have SATA cables and Molex to Serial ATA SATA Power Adapters so that's fine but I don't have any hdd brackets atm. Could I get away with just screwing one side and putting some foam or something to pad it out till I get one?

Also is the BIOS mod essential to doing this? Seen some different responses and I'm not sure if I need to do it.
 
Old 06-06-2012, 3:41 PM   #107
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Originally Posted by mdemetri2
Not that I am aware of....I didn't know WHS11 included a media server function lol, so one of the first things I did after installing OS from USB was to install ps3 media server. It wasnt until I tested that that I saw the additional entries for WHS.

I could reinstall everything I guess, as I'm waiting for my cashback to buy additional drives, so at the moment its not doing much - just been messing about with it. Will do that, unless someone knows how to remove one instance......
It has basic media sharing, its fairly useless though. You wont need to reinstall if it is this, it's somewhere in the whs dash, if I remember rightly its in the top right somewhere under file sharing, annoyingly I'm not near it to check the exact location or wording but I'm sure some kind soul will appear with the answer
 
Old 06-06-2012, 3:52 PM   #108
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I've been aware of the N40L for a while and wasn't interested as my ReadyNAS (although a fundamentally simpler product) works fine for me.

However I am in the process of planning an HTPC: it occurred to me that the N40L seems fine for this.

Are there many people using their N40L as a media client, watching M2TS rips or h264 re-encodes of 1080p content, and is it easy to get HD sound out the box into a processor, i.e. using a Radeon graphics card?

Are there any gotchas with this that I have overlooked? The most obvious one, form factor, doesn't bother me.
 
Old 06-06-2012, 4:14 PM   #109
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I've been aware of the N40L for a while and wasn't interested as my ReadyNAS (although a fundamentally simpler product) works fine for me.

However I am in the process of planning an HTPC: it occurred to me that the N40L seems fine for this.

Are there many people using their N40L as a media client, watching M2TS rips or h264 re-encodes of 1080p content, and is it easy to get HD sound out the box into a processor, i.e. using a Radeon graphics card?

Are there any gotchas with this that I have overlooked? The most obvious one, form factor, doesn't bother me.
I'm using it as a HTPC too.. Check out my post below for more info.. have fun!

HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L Owner's Thread *Part 3*
 
Old 06-06-2012, 4:26 PM   #110
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I'm using it as a HTPC too.. Check out my post below for more info.. have fun!

HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L Owner's Thread *Part 3*
Nice one thanks. So you are using it to watch files from the hard drive, also using it to record from Freeview HD, and using it as your NAS too? And is that working well? Do you keep it always on for the NAS functionality? Do you find it noisy when watching quiet parts of a film (I've read a few reports of sub standard PSUs and fans).

Does this unit support Gb LAN? Does it work well for 1080P without a standalone graphics card? Have you tried getting HD audio out of it using the 6450? I doubt the unit has digital optical or coax output, so have you tried a standalone sound card?

Do people know that Serversplus has a new cash back offer until the end of June and that the unit is £199.99? edit: excluding VAT, I should have checked.

Are there any other questions I can ask? Does anyone have a replacement question mark key please??

Last edited by Bossk128; 06-06-2012 at 4:29 PM.
 
Old 06-06-2012, 4:37 PM   #111
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I have SATA cables and Molex to Serial ATA SATA Power Adapters so that's fine but I don't have any hdd brackets atm. Could I get away with just screwing one side and putting some foam or something to pad it out till I get one?
You don't have to have anything securing the drive as long as you're not going to be moving the Microserver around. Just put some card in the bottom of the optical bay so you don't get anything shorting out and just leave it on that. You can put it in a 5.25" to 3.5" converter frame later.

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Also is the BIOS mod essential to doing this? Seen some different responses and I'm not sure if I need to do it.
It's only really required if you want to run an SSD rather than a standard mechanical drive from the spare SATA port. The modifed BIOS improves the performance of the SATA port (but will invalidate your HP warranty).
 
Old 06-06-2012, 4:41 PM   #112
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Nice one thanks. So you are using it to watch files from the hard drive, also using it to record from Freeview HD, and using it as your NAS too? And is that working well? Do you keep it always on for the NAS functionality? Do you find it noisy when watching quiet parts of a film (I've read a few reports of sub standard PSUs and fans).

Does this unit support Gb LAN? Does it work well for 1080P without a standalone graphics card? Have you tried getting HD audio out of it using the 6450? I doubt the unit has digital optical or coax output, so have you tried a standalone sound card?

Do people know that Serversplus has a new cash back offer until the end of June and that the unit is £199.99? edit: excluding VAT, I should have checked.

Are there any other questions I can ask? Does anyone have a replacement question mark key please??
You look very interested

1) Yes. NAS. Freeview HD watching & recording. XBMC. Blu-ray. And remote access from my office.

2) Yes. gigabit LAN.

3) Noise... very subjective but it's quieter than my existing IOMEGA Home Media server (NAS). It's not entirely silent but it's definitely not intrusive. And most of the time when watching movies, it's either the sound from the speakers are louder or something that I'm chewing is louder )

4) No Optical or coax output from the HD6450. I am not very familiar with the AV part of it but all music and video are transmitted via my Onkyo HTX-22HD using HDMI. And playing some flac music files as well. Anyone can assist me to confirm whether I'm getting HD audio??

Cheers...
 
Old 06-06-2012, 4:49 PM   #113
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You don't have to have anything securing the drive as long as you're not going to be moving the Microserver around. Just put some card in the bottom of the optical bay so you don't get anything shorting out and just leave it on that. You can put it in a 5.25" to 3.5" converter frame later.

It's only really required if you want to run an SSD rather than a standard mechanical drive from the spare SATA port. The modifed BIOS improves the performance of the SATA port (but will invalidate your HP warranty).
Thanks best to leave the BIOS for now then
Just had a look in my box of goodies and no Molex to ATA power adaptor Maplin want £5!

Moving the hdd to the optical tray later shouldn't cause any problems right? Just change boot order?
Don't fancy paying £5 when I could pay that online and get the mount bracket for that!
 
Old 06-06-2012, 4:53 PM   #114
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Reasonably interested . Getting fed up with my Popcorn Hour being so picky over encode settings. However, it is 100% silent as it uses a CF card as boot drive and has no fans. I could do something similar with this if required, cheaper than an SSD when I already have a NAS in another room. It doesn't have the eye candy I'm currently enjoying with MediaPortal though, so it's days are numbered.

Alternatively, if it works well as a NAS in addition to playing media I could sell my ReadyNAS.

What software do you use to play your media files? Assuming the streams are present in the files you should be able to choose the lossless audio stream. The Onk should then state either DTS-MA or DD True-HD on the front. LPCM would also be good but I doubt that conversion happens in the N40L (great if it did, then an Audiolab 8200AP would work!).

I was getting excited when I thought it was available for £90... schoolboy error.
 
Old 06-06-2012, 5:48 PM   #115
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if not what 3rd party software can i use with win 7 to be able to expand my array?

I know of drivepool but i think its only for WHS2011?

Many Thanks
If you don't want to go with WHS2011 software raid because it can't be expanded, then take a look at Drivebender or Flexraid.

Last edited by JeffD; 06-06-2012 at 5:55 PM.
 
Old 06-06-2012, 5:55 PM   #116
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Getting my N40L + WHS 2011 tomorrow

Going to be putting in 3x2TB and was thinking of disk pooling (Only going to be films, TV, music so don't really care for backups as I have my important stuff in the clouds).
What do people recommend Drive Bender or DrivePool?
I run Drivepool as it was designed for use with WHS2011 and is more tightly integrated into WHS2011 because of that. Drivebender gets good reports as well and but it was designed to run on multiple versions of Windows so is not so tightly integrated into the Dashboard.
 
Old 06-06-2012, 10:25 PM   #117
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anybody useing whs2011 and running slimserver on the n40l smoothly?
ive just bought the n40l and a friend is installing whs2011 onto it but i would to run slimserver on it but not sure how to get slimserver installed or which version any help/tips would be great
 
Old 06-06-2012, 10:29 PM   #118
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anybody useing whs2011 and running slimserver on the n40l smoothly?
ive just bought the n40l and a friend is installing whs2011 onto it but i would to run slimserver on it but not sure how to get slimserver installed or which version any help/tips would be great
You can just install the Logitech Media Server like you would a standard application. They don't have an WHS add-on but you don't really need since its all configured through your browser anyway.
 
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Old 06-06-2012, 10:36 PM   #119
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Hi all... Can I ask if anyone knew this is "normal".

I've moved all my iTunes music files from my laptop to the N40L under one main folder. All the musics are properly sync with the N40.

The problem is, everytime the server goes to hibernate my iTunes keep on changing the path of the media location back to the default in my laptop!

Is this something that anyone has came across? Although it's nothing major but a bit annoyed

Thanks in advance.
 
Old 06-06-2012, 11:04 PM   #120
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Do people know that Serversplus has a new cash back offer until the end of June and that the unit is £199.99? edit: excluding VAT, I should have checked.
https://twitter.com/ServersPlus/stat...46555973337088

Use MSFREENDUK for free next day delivery!
 
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