So I got my HP N54L Micro server today, and it is quite simply brilliant, the only flaw with it seems to be a slightly noisy PSU fan, but this will be fine once its in my TV Cabinet.
So the first order of business was to install the modded BIOS to fully enable the extra SATA ports.
Now this would have been quite easy to just download someone else’s modded BIOS and simply apply it using the USB BIOS upgrading key created by the HP Utility
But instead I decided to mod my own BIOS to learn a bit more about them. So my first port of call is to get the Original BIOS (see HP’s website) and a modded BIOS (search the internet for it). Then you need to get the Bios Modding Tool.
Now we have all those tools, we need to decide what we need to do, we need to enable some extra functionality that is currently hidden in the BIOS. Namely we want access to the Southbridge Chipset configuration.
Which we can see is un-ticked. So all we need to do is to tick it, and then save it. (I ticked everything in the end)
Once we are done, we just need to copy it to our USB BIOS updating flash drive, and update the BIOS on the server.
I would recommend having a look around the BIOS with that tool, its really quite interesting.