How to build a 6 drive MicroServer

In this video we show you how to add 2 additional drives to your Gen7 HP Microserver (N36L / N40L / N54L).

To add additional drives to the MicroServer you will need the following (affiliate links):

SATA to SATA cable

eSATA to SATA cable

MOLEX to dual SATA power

If you are mounting two 3.5" drives you will also need (requires modification)

I use 4TB WD Red Drives as they are designed for 24/7 NAS use

[dell]

Back about that time TigerDirect was selling a low end HP ML-10 tower server for $199. It's taller than the one your using and does not have the slide in drive caddies but was an attractive option at the offered price. I loaded that up with 6ea sata disks and 16GB of ram and installed Freenas on it using 2ea 16GB thumb drives (mirrored so if one fails the other takes over).

That has been running for 5 years now without any hiccups.

[mattsephton]

Thanks for this great video and the links in the description! I'm doing the same but with an ODD and SSD in the top bay.

[darthvader]

Hi. The brackets link is not working. Would you please share their name along with other details so that I can search?

[craigprocter]

hi, nice vid showing how to mount the drives, but some info on BIOS settings to support 6 drives would be useful please. Thank you.

[TNigriventer]

Hey :-) Nice guide. But what is the HDD guide called? I mean the mount in the top where you placed the two extra disks. Please link if possible..

[rossfromsa]

Nice one. Does this machine allow booting from any drive in the system? Could you assign one of the top-mounted drives to be the system drive?

[pjazzy]

Awesome vid. Just what I am planning to do.

[jrlx]

appreciate this vid, was wondering where the sata cables were didn't rtfm :D

[sgen]

Maybe a newbie questions, why not connect that to a sata harddisk array via the e-sata connection and technicially get unlimited number of drives? Subject to the bios supporting it.

[sgen]

Can this machine run Freenas since that requires at least 8gig?

[albertorenatobiancamano]

Hi, optimus upgrade!!! I have a lot of this microserver but all with old bios and new bios have the same problem: the lan is GigaByte but in speedtest don't exceed 100/110 Mb
I try to insert new lan board Gygabyte but don't move of 100Mb... With other PC the speedtest is more of 800Mb.
Windows and Linux see GigaByte ethernet connection but is not really. Do you try a speed test with your? Do you have tha same problem?

[davidclark]

Anyone know what the 3.5in drive adaptor was, the link is dead now?