Solved Install 13.1 on a Gen 7 HP Proliant MicroServer N54L?

C

ccammack

Is there any reason why I wouldn't be able to install 13.1 on a old Gen 7 HP Proliant MicroServer N54L? I would like to mirror zroot on 4TB drives, but I don't think the hardware has UEFI, so I don't know if it can even boot from a drive larger than 2TB. Is there a way to trick it into booting from the large drive, or maybe boot from a small SSD and then mount the system on the large mirror?
 

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ccammack said:
but I don't think the hardware has UEFI, so I don't know if it can even boot from a drive larger than 2TB.
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Doesn't have anything to do with UEFI or the traditional BIOS boot. As VladiBG already noted, it's a limitation of the MBR partitioning scheme. It should be perfectly fine to BIOS/CSM boot a GPT partitioned disk.
 
Also don't forget to update your BIOS as they may be also limitation of the maximum LBA that can be recognized by the SATA controller.
 
VladiBG said:
Also don't forget to update your BIOS as they may be also limitation of the maximum LBA that can be recognized by the SATA controller.
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Aren't those a limitation in the Gigabyte order of magnitude in that case? Something about 128GB rings a bell. Those are really, really old systems.
 
Yes for the old LBA Assisted it was ~8GB but i'm talking about the software raid controller which on some old motherboards is also limited to maximum volume size of 2TB. So when you update the BIOS you are updating and the software raid controller firmware as part of the bios update in this case it's AMD Raid so it can recognize 48bit LBA.
 
Thank you both. I found many people saying that large drives work on the stock system, but a small number claiming that the system won't boot from those large drives. It sounds like the smaller group was mistaken. If I understand you correctly, it sounds like I might be able to just move my existing 4TB mirrored system into the N54L and BIOS boot it without any additional changes (except for disabling any on-board RAID features).
 
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