How to Resurrect a 10 Year Old Acer Aspire H340 Server
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- Опубликовано: 29 окт 2020
- In this video, I resurrect a 10 year old Acer Aspire Easystore H340 Home Server. Retrofitting this headless server with a graphics card, I modify it to run Windows 10 on a USB flash drive and add 20 TB of hard drive space to configure a basic NAS setup. Running on a vintage Intel Atom 230 processor, the server scores a whopping 210 passmark, but the processor consumes very little power with a TDP of 4W, making it a very nice, low-power NAS. Carbon dating indicates that I purchased it in December of 2009, and I shut it down and placed it in storage about 7 years ago after the 1TB Western Digital Green hard drive failed.
For those ordering the ATI FireMV, here is a tip, thanks to Wayne Greer:
When ordering the ATI FireMV 2250, you must have the small form factor Model #100-505179. If you get Model #100-505176, it is the full form factor and will not fit in the slot.
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Wow! Awesome to see this running all these years later!!
Your videos are so informative and hands on. Recently, with one of your videos help I was able to replace my HP Pavilion 15 series laptop HDD with SSD and migrate my OS and data.
Thank you for the feedback on the successful migration. 🙏 I'm glad you found my videos useful.
I must say, i know im very late to this but as it is the first of your vids I'm seeing as I will be following this guide as I got my hands on one of these, as soon a my order for jumpers comes in that is. I cant begin to talk about how awesome you are at this, you explain everything I could ever want for this project. Thank you so much!
I know this video is old a couple years old but it still works great. I was going to try to resurrect this old box with CasaOS or some other flavour of Linux but I do not have a comptable graphics card to go through the install. I honestly didn't even think to use Windows To Go on a USB stick...
I also didn't know about the BIOS jumper, so this really has helped point me in the right direction. Thank you for the video!
Amazing timing on this video - I'm getting ready to replace my (still in use) home server and was curious what to do with it after I move off of it. :) Cheers, great video.
Thank you 🙏 Glad you found the video useful.
Excellent Walk-through! A+!
Thank you for the feedback 🙏.
Thanks for this great video, I have follow each step to be successful to resuscitate my old H340. 👍🏻👍🏻
Fanstastic - thanks for the feedback 🙏.
Well I mostly used your tutorial to get this thing running something other than Windows Home Server. It managed to get OpenMediaVault running on it and theres even a driver to control the LEDs! Very nice Thanks!
You're welcome, and thank you 🙏. Glad you found the video useful.
I did the same thing with OMV! Do you have a link to the driver for the LEDs?
Are the LED drivers part of OpenMediaVault?
Would it be possible for you to make a tutorial how to do installation for OpenMediaVault, PLEASE!!
I also made an OpenMediaVault installation onto that box, but with a twist: I installed an pcie-to-m.2 adapter and slapped an ssd onto that.
The internal SMI has just GRUB and /boot, the rest is run from ssd. For the installation it was helpful to have the breakout cable for the internal VGA,
but when the first debian installation is through, you can do everything remotely from another pc.
I am aware that the cpu will not use the ssd to its maximum potential, but it keeps all 4 hdd trays available for data discs.
My second box has WHS 2011 installed, because a friend uses a almost identical configuration in his workplace and I can better help if problems arise.
Man, this is nifty. I have an H340 and was just now wondering if it could run something other than Windows Home Server. I only need it to store and serve files, so this may breathe new life into my old little machine!
Thanks for the feedback 🙏👍. Windows 10 works fine but it's a bit heavy - I've been experimenting with Ubuntu lately and it's very lightweight. I may try a video on it in the future.
@@accessrandom That would be cool! I dont know enough about Linux to know how to remotely operate the server without using a guide first.
@@accessrandom Please do.... I will check if you already posted it.
I "gracefully & delicately" (LOLZ) did this about 10 years ago with my "venerable" (TEHEHEHEHE) Acer Aspire H340! I've gone from Windows home server 2003 to Linux back to Windows home server 2003 and now I'm going to try your method of Windows 10!
I'm actually thinking of trying a lightweight version on Linux myself. Windows 10 is a bit heavy (but it does work)...
Have one and it's running Rock Solid since 2009 until today
I guess I am pulling mine out of storage as well! 20TB wow I have a Data Center now! Can we go larger than 5 TB?
This is certainly an interesting upgrade I have my 340 in the garage doing a weekly backup of movies & TV from my current NAS but storage space is wearing thin so I'm definitely up for giving it a try my concern is the video card there are no local (Australian) matches for the 2250 on eBay. Could you recommend any other models or card specifications needed to fit please?
did you find something?
Good to know that an Atom 230 can deliver gigabit, although i doubt it would perform well with RAID levels above 0, 1 or 10 - crunching those parity bits might be a bit too much. But hey, you're reusing tech instead of throwing it out, it does what you want it to do, and it does it quite well. I love this graphics card - i'm a sucker for odd balls like this 1x PCIe thing. My home server has a Matrox G55 good-old-PCI Graphics card, with whopping 32 MB - it has an (Low Force Helix) LFH-60 connector, similar to DSM-59.
👍 I agree - I think the Atom would definitely choke on anything more. The ATI card is completely unsupported by AMD nowadays, as their site doesn't even list legacy drivers for older OSes for them - but remoting into the server wouldn't use it anyways. The mainboard on the H340 even has a 20-pin connector for a debug board that can output video, but I thought wiring up the pins would be more work's worth than an $11 card from eBay :) Those Matrox Millennium cards back in the day were good cards...
@@accessrandom oh yeah, Matrox seems to be particularly famous for clean / strong VGA signal quality. However, what amazes me, is that my SkyLake Xeon (socket 1151) home server can boot with a "GPU" on an on-board PCI-to-PCIe-bridge (Gigabyte GA-X150M-Pro ECC MoBo). I guess, that's the proven "adaptor" DesignPattern at work, right there - "develop" (soft- & hardware) against APIs, properly defined, Interfaces - that's probably what makes this possible. "Just slap a PCIe-to-PCI-bridge on your board, bang, you've got transparent device enumeration" (something like that; i love it)
Great videos!! I have an unrelated question to this video. I currently have a 10 year old 3 tb 7200 rpm seagate hard drive, and I want to install a 4tb hard drive and then turn it into my main drive. Does the rpm speed matter of the new hard drive? Can I put the 3 tb in raid 1, just in case the 3 tb ever fails and then just run off the 4tb hard drive?
Thank you 🙏. The RPM will affect the speed at which programs load and data is accessed. If you went from a 7200 RPM to a 5400 RPM drive, you'd probably notice a slowdown with all else being equal. Storage spaces are basically a software-configured RAID (with two-way mirror equivalent to RAID 1) - and just like with hardware RAID, the array would size down to the lowest common denominator, i.e. the smallest disk in the array, or 3TB in your case. The only problem with storage spaces is that it isn't clear whether you can boot to them - Microsoft has a Surface model that boots to one but there seems to be some special driver that allows them to do that. I haven't heard of anyone successfully creating a bootable storage space on their own...
Sorry to have to ask this but after OS is installed can the thumb drive be removed from the NAS?
No worries. No, the thumb drive will need to remain plugged in because it essentially becomes your boot drive with the OS on it.
i have the model of Acer Aspire NAS before this. dunno if it's worth ressurecting lol
I just dig out my H340 as well and tried to install windows 10 but it just takes way too long to do it. It takes a while on windows 7 as well. I am surprise your file transfer speed is fast because I remember it was slow which is the reaosn I retried it and went for synology NAS at first place. I wonder if it is due to I was using green driver.
That certainly could be. I think drivers for older hardware with newer OS's can cause a lot of problems (for example, since the ATI video card is no longer supported, I tried a driver made for an older OS and things were twice as slow as the basic VGA driver). It did pick up the Marvell Ethernet driver and seems to be working at gigabit speeds.
@@accessrandom I remember the file transfer speed was about 20mb with jumbo frame which is why I retire it at first place. It took me a long time to remember what I used to do,
First I have trouble restore the system with recover disk as press the pin at back doesn't do anything. I have to delete partition on the hdd to let h340 boot into the onboard sd card for recover mode.
Windows home server keep get blue screen crash after booting as I have Zotec Ion pci-e 1x card installed. I thought it is driver issue, however I couldn't find any driver for it. Nvidia didn't driver support back when I first bought the card while Zotec has removed the product from their site. I also couldn't find the custom made vga debug adapter I bought and not to mention I don't have any monitor with vga port anymore. After hours of trying to solve the issue, I finally remember that I need to boot into safe mode to disable the onboard video card first. =__=
Finally I boot into windows home server with network and vga support and I thought I get the ION driver from windows update. But I should have know better because windows update is broken. I might try to install windows 7 later on but it will take forever.
To be honest the only thing I want to keep H340 is the case, but it is going to difficult to find hdd back panel and power supply to work standard itx case.
@@outsider2k8 Oof that sounds like quite a journey. I understand why you went with Synology. I got burned by the failed hard drive so I had no motivation to use it again with the recovery CDs until I found out I could boot from a USB flash drive (plus I was running out of space on my existing QNAP units). It's a nice case, but agree with the hard-to-find components - I'm afraid the power supply will be hard to find if it fails. The good thing is that I can just take the hard drives out and plug them into any Windows computer to retrieve any data.
Wondering if you can suggest another video card, I can't seem to find a reasonably priced one on the net..
Unfortunately, I haven't had reports of other cards working (one commenter below tried the ATI FireMV 2260 and though it fit inside the case, it didn't work for him). I'll update the description in case anyone else has had success with another card.
@@accessrandom @Casey Vess The only card that will natively work is the 2250. This is not a solicitation... however, I have 4 cards that work with the H340. Let me know if I can help
I got lucky on eBay (2/11/2021) and got the card and dongle both for $23.74 with shipping. From revive IT. it was labeled as barco ATI FireMV MXRT -1150. But when it arrived it was the actual card from his video. I also bought that one on Amazon that's around $100 bucks. LMBO, it was the wrong one, so I'd try the ebay route if your still interested.
@@sayler23 thanks
@@sayler23 Same here, just got one myself. Only issue is that its a full height bracket, but it seems I gotta spend another 5-10 bucks for a bracket. Still, to keep the server chugging for what I need it for, its not too bad.
I've been using my H340 for about 12 years now. Even with the WHS v1 software, it has always been reliable and easily accessible outside of my LAN. However, I hate the bloatware from M***fee. Your video inspired me to upgrade and I am waiting on delivery of the FireMV card (Saturday) to work on the project and upgrade.
I do have a Win10 Pro license. I was wondering about whether to install Synology as the OS, instead. In your opinion, should this be ok or am I going to run into any issues? Thanks for an excellent tutorial! I am going to be a new subscriber.
Thank you. After having used it for a while, I think Win 10 is functional (that is, if it just sits in the background and manages file transfers). I'm happy with the performance in that respect. However, it can be very slow when you RDP into it, especially when there are other tasks occurring in parallel (like a Windows update for example). If you can install Synology or any flavor of linux (or even a headless version of Windows), I think it would be much more responsive to manage remotely.
To those who want to attempt this project, PLEASE TAKE NOTE:
When ordering or search for the ATI FireMV 2250, you must have the small form factor Model #100-505179.
If you get Model #100-505176, it is the full form factor and will not fit in the slot. I made this error and was lucky to have a supplier who accepts returns. I am now anxiously awaiting the correct version so that I can complete this project. Thanks again to @access random for the inspirartion!! Good luck to all. Stay well, safe, healthy and happy.
@@waynegreer848 Thanks for that info - I wasn't aware of the different variants. Do you mind if I add that to the description with credit to you?
@@accessrandom No problem, bud.
@@waynegreer5070 Done! Thank you 🙏
these videos are fun to watch also is there a tutorial on how to clean your pc I have a cyberpower pc Cyberpowerpc Gamer Ultra Desktop AMD Ryzen 5 1400 3.2 GHz CPU?
Thank you. Do you mean cleaning the inside of a PC? I don't have a video about cleaning specifically so I'll need to put that on my list, but generally, I'll just use a can of air and spray the CPU/GPU fans, any case fans, and the PSU fan, then anywhere in the case where dust has accumulated.
@@accessrandom ah ok
@access random et al...
Success!!
My video cards arrive today. In order to install the the card, it is a delicate process. As is noted in the video, take your time and be careful. It took me about 30 seconds to seat the card. Windows 10 Pro is installing now. It is a long process (10 minutes). Once the operating system is installed, it should be smooth sailing.
This video tutorial is as good as you can get. Thanks so much! AFAIK, every detail and issue has been addressed.
On a side note, I thought that I purchased one 2250 card. In fact, I got 5!!! I'm located in Canada. If anyone needs a card, PM me.
Good luck to all!
Fantastic - thanks for the update! At the very least you'll have some spare cards :)
@access random I'd love to know how you have done the voice for your video. It is outstanding!!! If you care to share the method, I'm sure that many can profit from your instruction.
Is it possible to have a PM on RUclips. I've got an idea for the installation is Win10 Pro on on of the hard drive partitions. However, I'm not certain what I'm looking for and how the Aspire Easystore bios handles boot options. Hopefully, we can solve this issue and make life easier for users. Also, is there a way to use some extra storage as virtual RAM with the Easystore? Bottom line, I don't want clog/dominate/hijack the comments section here. Thanks again for this project idea!
@@waynegreer5070 I just use a Shure dynamic mic through a Focurite audio interface, then record directly to Vegas Pro (then edit out all the umms :).
@@waynegreer5070 The comment section here has relatively low traffic (compared to some of my other videos), so I think it will be ok to discuss here. Virtual RAM would definitely help with slower hard drives, but I'm not sure how to integrate that with the read/write operations of the hard drive itself. SSDs would be better, but the bottleneck would remain the gigabit network speed.
A few days ago I also installed Windows 10 superlight on a stick and was able to get everything running via VGA.
For me it is 4x6tb.
If I send data to the Easystore via approval, I get about 25mb / sec (WiFi). However, when I send data to the Easystore via Win SCP it is only about 2.5mb / sec. Anyone have any idea why this is so slow?
Beautiful video...
But, using linux should be better for a file server don't you think?
Thank you. That's a good point - the reason I went with Windows is because I'm not very fluent with linux or others like freeneas or truenas, but I'd love to try it one day. In retrospect, I probably could have use a Win Server core version without a UI.
@@accessrandom you will not regret it!
Try OMV or Ubuntu-server , that is a good start
Thanks again for the video, beautiful
@@JeanFrancoCaringi Thank you for the recommendations 🙏
could it handle xpenology?
@@filipes After doing some googling, it appears that others have been successful installing xpenology.
Hi, great video, please kindly request you to upload link of ISO image of software installation disk which came with your acer h340 as i have lost it, thanks in advance
that would be awesome if he did!
I am still unable to load windows due to the Partition error as described. Are there anyother ideals? Really want this to work!!
Since the error is about Partition 1, try deleting that partition on the hard drive before installing. Windows will normally ask you to create a new partition on a blank drive, so perhaps a partition created by the installer will work.
Thanks got my H340 up and running. Only problem is driver for Marvell Yukon network card. Win 10 set it up for 100mb max. Any ideas?
Mine is installed as a Marvell Yukon 88E8071 gigabit adapter. Is that what yours is set to?
@@accessrandom yes that's what mine installed as.
@@doncarrier147 Interesting - when I transfer files to/from the Acer, I am getting close to gigabit speeds (80 to 90 MB/s). Have you been able to test the connection by transferring files?
curious as to why you didn't use windows home server 2011
I had a Windows 10 license handy that I wanted to use, but if I were to do it again today, I would probably use Ubuntu Server to reduce the overhead...
Hello ar,
I was wondering if using the windows media tool will work for the ISO file.
I do not have access to Microsoft Azure.
Can you advise?
if i can not, could you suggest a work around?
You can use the ISO file that is downloaded from Microsoft's media tool site to create the install (but you will still need to use Rufus to boot to the flash drive with an installed Windows on it).
@@accessrandom Thanks for the reply. when I download media tool, it gives me several files Boot, efi, sources, support, autorun, bootmgr, bootmgr.efi, and setup.
Which file will i select for Rufus to use?
sorry for all the questions, i'm a bit green in the subject..
@@caseyvess41 No worries - what you should look for is an ISO file (a file with an extension of *.ISO) which is the image of the entire Windows installation. I'm not sure of the link for it on Microsoft's site but that is the file you will need.
@@accessrandom ok, this is a bit frustrating! Download windows media room and the iso file. I get an error message. "windows cannot be installed on drive one partition"
Not sure how I can attach a photo of the screenshot.
Any ideas on how I can get around this?
@@caseyvess41 Are you using Rufus on a USB drive, and is the USB drive large enough (16 GB or higher)?
Rather than the ATI FireMV 2250, would the 2260 model graphics card work?
Judging by the pictures that I see, it seems the 2260 is a bit tall (i.e., the card itself is the height of the backplate), whereas the 2250 has a lower profile. I don't believe it will fit, but I'll need to defer to other viewers who may have more experience for a definitive answer. Anyone?
@@accessrandom I looked up dimensions for both cards and they are the same. 6.6” long and 2.3” tall.
I ordered the 2260 to try it out, I'll report back here if it works or not. Thanks
@@mkeyes001 Thanks. I didn't know this, but a commenter pointed out that even with the MV2250, there are two versions of it - a full and small form factor. If the MV2260 has a similar small form factor, I think you should be ok.
@Matt Keyes I'm still waiting for my card to arrive. I think that the 2260 has the same two version issue. I hope that yours is the small work station edition. There are images on a Google search.
I have recently inherited one of these Acer Aspire Easystore H340's and would like to do this mod. Am having trouble locating a 'low profile' graphics card with the right connection though. Can anybody help me to locate a card that would fit, perhaps some suggestions to alternatives to the one shown in the video that would work? TIA.
the video card was not necessary, because the mainboard has a vga pin header.
does anyone know i can download the ISO file? im stuck because i think the iso file i got is somehow bad.
Is it possible to upgrade the ram on the H340?
You can go up to 2GB of RAM. I know some configurations came with 1GB DDR2 memory, so you can upgrade to 2GB. Unfortunately, mine came with the max.
@@accessrandom Thanks. Ill have to see what mine came with.
Has anyone gotten the error "Windows can't be installed on drive 1 partition 1?"
under Details it said
"Windows cannot be installed to this dis. Setup does not support configuration of or installation to disks connected through a USB or IEEE 1394 port. Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computter's controller is inabled in the computer's BIOS menu"
Was the flash drive formatted as a GPT disk by any chance (in Rufus)? If so, you'll need to format it as MBR.
@@accessrandom MBR. I have tried the latest Rufus and the portable version
@@accessrandom I did in fact format usb as MBR. No luck in getting this to work as of yet. so far, i have used windows media tools and then used Rufus. used an actual ISO file of windows 10, no luck. used the full version as well as the portable version for both files... nothing has worked yet.
I suppose I could try windows 8 and then upgrade? any thoughts? Other things I have tried is to cleaning the usb in command prompt. that just erased the usb drive.
@@caseyvess41 I looked through Rufus' FAQ section (it's a pretty exhaustive troubleshooting document) but I couldn't find anything about that particular error message. Is it possible to try a different USB flash drive?
I'm surprised that you installed Windows, instead of a compact Linux distro
Yeah I know 😀 I had a spare product key for Pro lying around and I'm not that fluent with linux (installed it twice in the past but that's about it).
@@accessrandom I can totally understand that! I do highly recommend learning it, though, if you've got a little patience. It's great for stuff like this!
@@accessrandom It works for you but I have to ask why not an OS like freenas?
@@ozmobozo Fair question - it's the same reason I didn't use linux, which is fluency with freenas. My other videos are geared toward Windows users so I decided to go with 10 Pro (though in retrospect, I might have used a core version of server without a UI).
There is a Linux fix for the Drive LEDs. Anyone find a Windows fix?
I'm afraid I'm not aware of one - I'll need to defer to others. Anyone?
so....... today minus windows and run UNRAID