I have a HP Proliant ML110 G5 (tower) which fails to boot whenever a large disk (4TB) is attached via USB.
The machine displays the HP logo for a very long time (the POST on these machines is long anyway, but in this instance it can be 5 mins or more), then shows a black screen, then restarts (showing the HP logo again…)
I have not been able to check whether the system will boot when the disk is attached via SATA because the USB caddy enclosure is sealed and under warranty. The largest other disk attached to the system via USB is 3TB, the largest disk attached to the SATA controllers is 2TB.
I've checked the manuals, and the POST troubleshooting workflow, but none give any clues.
Does anyone please know if this range of Proliant servers should be able to handle these disks attached on boot, or if there is a setting in BIOS or the firmware which I have missed? I'm not keen to update the firmware (everything else works very well, and I can live with needing to remove the drive/buy a UPS for power outages), but if it is the only option I will try it.
Best Answer
This question doesn't quite make sense. Do you mean to say TB (Terabyte) instead of GB (Gigabyte)?
If the latter, I think the boot process is subject to the contents of the drive(s). This could be as simple as correcting your system boot order in the BIOS.
If this is the former, and you have large external disks attached to the server, have you tried the front and rear USB ports to observe the behavior? Depending on BIOS settings, the effect could be different based on the drive location.
You mention this is a ProLiant ML110 G5. That server is from ~2009, so it's long past its normal support lifetime. I think you'll get the most mileage by working with the BIOS configuration.