Old HP Microserver N40L woes

[wyerd]

My old HP N40L Microserver has been running for over 8 years but the other day I lost one of the SSDs in the Raid 1 OS arrays. I’m using an HP P410i Raid controller configured as Raid 1 - 2 x 250GB SSDs for the OS, Windows Home Server 2011 and Raid 5 - 4 x 4TB HHDs for the data volume.

I moved the sever to another table, but on reboot I was greeted to the message that a boot device was not found. I checked the logical and physical drives in the HP raid manager (F8 just after the RAID controller initialisation) and all disks are listed OK apart from the failed SSD.

i‘ve also tried booting from the WHS2011 installation which I have on a USB stick, but it doesn’t load properly. It gets as far as displaying the Windows logo, but then hangs with the mouse pointer on a black screen.

I was in the process of moving data to the iCloud when this happened, so most of it has been copied over apart form a few home videos and my DVD & BD rips.

interestingly, I’ve been able to read both SSDs from the Raid 1 array connected via USB to my Windows 10 laptop, so I‘m really not sure what’s going on.

Any ideas on how I can retrieve the data from the data volume?

Thanks!

 

[oneman]

Have you got a spare a PC you can plug the RAID controller and drives into, I assume you are using SAS to SATA fan out cable ? As long as the cables are connected to the same drives in the same order you will be able to access the data on the RAID5 volume.

And it does sound like the RAID controller is playing up if you can access the SSD still on another pc

 

[wyerd]

Have you got a spare a PC you can plug the RAID controller and drives into, I assume you are using SAS to SATA fan out cable ? As long as the cables are connected to the same drives in the same order you will be able to access the data on the RAID5 volume.

And it does sound like the RAID controller is playing up if you can access the SSD still on another pc

Yes I am. I have a PC in the basement not sure if it has enough SATA power connectors. I’ll have to check.

Yeah, that’s what I was beginning to think.

 

[mjn]

Didn’t think the 410 supported SSD? I know the 420 does.

 

[oneman]

Didn’t think the 410 supported SSD? I know the 420 does.

The have SSD on their support list, obviously Enterprise models. There was a post saying its unstable with some Samsung SSD which doesn't place nice with SATA 2.

 

[ajohnson30]

Yes I am. I have a PC in the basement not sure if it has enough SATA power connectors. I’ll have to check.

If you really needed to you could get a sata power cable splitter. I wouldn't run it permanently, but it'll do the job in a pinch
Amazon product or Amazon product

 

[DerickS]

Hi all. I know this is old, but I am trying desperately to boot my N40L from a NVME, which is connected via PCI card. It is working fine as Win 10 could see it (I already transferred my OS onto it). However, I cannot get the BIOS to recognize the NVME - probably due to the lack of UEFI. Is there any way to upgrade the BIOS to make this possible ?

 

[mjn]

All you can do is install the latest BIOS, but i have a feeling that the server is too old for what you want to do. If the server supports boot from USB, you could attach the drive via USB3, but obviously you won't gain the full performance of the NVME drive.

 

[DerickS]

All you can do is install the latest BIOS, but i have a feeling that the server is too old for what you want to do. If the server supports boot from USB, you could attach the drive via USB3, but obviously you won't gain the full performance of the NVME drive.

Thanks for your input. I already installed the latest BIOS - using the USB boot to load it (so that portion does work). As the machine is so old, it does not even have USB3 yet ... However, that might be my only option - should there be no way to upgrade the BIOS (again, assuming the MB is UEFI compatible).

 

[mjn]

You'll need to use a USB3 plugin card. Would it be easier (cheaper?)to find a newer microserver that does support boot from NVME. These microservers were never crayz expensive.

 

[DerickS]

True. I was just trying to "rescue" this baby. It never gave any hassles but is getting ridiculously slow nowadays. Was hoping to induce some speed by running my OS from NVME.

 

[mjn]

True. I was just trying to "rescue" this baby. It never gave any hassles but is getting ridiculously slow nowadays. Was hoping to induce some speed by running my OS from NVME.

What is wrong with using a SSD SATA drive?

 

[Adrian E]

I think either UEFI is supported or not, so a BIOS update won't ever add support to an old bit of hardware that pre-dates UEFI rollout.

I'm still using an N54L with OMV software installed on a 120GB Crucial SSD, but have previously used a USB stick plugged into the mainboard USB port inside the unit, and it boots very quickly from either. Clearly if you're doing any significant processing the MB and limited RAM capacity will quickly result in it working hard.

I've been tempted by one of the Gen10 versions, but having swapped out all the drives to 6TB ones and got it all working properly I'm not sure I can be bothered when it does what I want most of the time. Apparently some of the intermediate models have not been so reliable and are best avoided.

 

[asheashe]

Mad the value these offered, I've had an n36L and just checked my emails and I ordered it on 4th nov 2011, for £223 with then £100 cash back taken off. it served me well until about 3 months ago when indecided I needed something more up to date and that set me back best part of £500