I have an HP Pavilion Elite (HPE-390t) system that is from July, 2010. The system came with 2 x 1 TB hard drives using Intel Matrix Storage Manager option ROM v8.0.1.1003 ICH10R and running Win7 Ultimate 64-bit. The BIOS revision is 6.10 09/16/10 with core version 08.00.15 (I believe the BIOS is American Megatrends?), and the system product # is WU961AV#ABA.
Recently, an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server I was running crashed (due to disk issues/corruption I believe), and so now I've decided I'd like to re-purpose this HPE-390t as an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS server with RAID1 redundancy. I went out and bought 2 x 4 TB Seagate HD's, but of course didn't realize that I'd have issues getting them to work with the Intel Matrix Storage Manager (which I believe is the same thing as the Intel RST, right?). Apparently, the option ROM is too old to support drives greater than 2 TB (I think), and so both drives are showing up as 1678.0 GB drives. I can set them up in RAID1 fashion that way, and had no issues installing Win7-64bit, but would like to get the full 4 TB usage out of them.
Apparently, from the reading/research I've done, updates to the option ROM are handled through BIOS updates, and for whatever reason HP pretty much abandoned this machine and there are no additional BIOS updates past the original one (which I have installed). I did come across some references to BIOS modding, which I'm assuming is customizing and installing new BIOS's that are more updated, but I'm not sure if this is the right path to take, and if it is, how to proceed (and whether the machine will be stable with these modded BIOS's, since I plan to use this as a production Ubuntu server).
Alternatively, is it possible the motherboard manufacturer has more recent updates that might include updated Intel option ROM's that I could somehow get from them (vs. through HP's support site)?
Or, could I get some sort of PCI or other card in the machine that I could use to set up both drives as 4 TB RAID1? Would that make more sense and then just have a smaller drive connected directly to the motherboard as the primary OS and use the RAID1 4 TB drives (via the PCI or other card) for where all my data ends up being stored (although then the smaller OS drive wouldn't be redundant, unless I'm able to use two smaller RAID1 drives for the OS with the Intel Matrix Storage Manager)?
And one other question (although not necessarily for this forum - but maybe someone knows) - assuming I can get RAID to recognize the 4 TB drives and set them up as RAID1, will Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS support/recognize these drives for installation and RAID1 redundancy?
Any help is greatly appreciated, as I'm at a standstill here and the only other option I can see is looking for a more recent machine to use these 4 TB drives with, but I'd prefer not to spend more money if I don't have to (especially since this is a pretty good machine even if it is 5 years old). Thanks!