Windows Home Server - Rebuild of HP Pavilion a630n (ASUS)

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mshneour
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Joined: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:04 am

Hello.

I have an HP Pavilion a630n desktop which I would like to re-purpose for a Windows Home Server machine.

The HP computer was shipped with Windows XP Home. At present, I am running Win XP Home SP2, and using a Promise FastTrak TX4300 SATA controller in a RAID 1 (mirrored) configuration with two Seagate Barracuda 7200 drives. The OS is running on a separate SATA drive via the motherboard drive controller.

I want to do a clean load of Windows Home Server on this machine (using the separate system drive to run the OS), and reconfigure the Promise card to run the two (or up to four) 7200 SATA drives as JBOD. Presumably, Windows Home Server will then implement its form of software-based data redundancy over the available data drives.

The HP Support site indicates that the motherboard is an ASUS PTGD1-LA, with the "Grouper" sub-classification. Link: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/docu ... uct=426322. The HP BIOS/driver download page shows software release dates circa 2005/2006, which precede the release of Win Home Server. Link: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/soft ... 22&lang=en. The ASUS Support site does not list "PTGD1-LA" as a product number under the Socket 775 classification. Link: http://support.asus.com/download/downlo ... uage=en-us.

My questions are:

(1) Do updated BIOS and/or drivers exist for this motherboard? If so, then where may I download them?

(2) If no updates exist, then will the original BIOS and drivers supplied by HP (presumably from ASUS, although HP might very well have modified them), work properly with this motherboard running Windows Home Server?

My understanding is that Win Home Server was built upon the Windows Server 2003 code base. Also, the HP Support site references an install of Win Vista, even though the machine is not officially "supported" under Vista. So, perhaps everything will be fine. I would prefer, however, to know the facts in advance of my spending hours on a re-build of this system, only to find out that the firmware doesn't work.

Any guidance from one or more of you geniuses out there will be greatly appreciated!

Thank you.

Mark Shneour
edwin
The Hardware Archivist
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Joined: Wed Mar 20, 2002 7:11 pm
Location: Netherlands
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1) At the HP site. This board was built by Asus for HP in large quantites for a special low price and on the condition HP does the support for it (OEM version is the term for that) so no drivers at Asus.

2) check if the i915 chipset is supported for Home Server, if it is, chances are it will run ok. What you really should check is if your Fasttrak controller is supported at all, that might be a bigger hurdle.

Note: what will you be using this "server" for? I hope nothing more than shared data as this is a cheap consumer PC not suited for real server tasks.
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
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