Graphics Card for 4312

[a_carneiro]

Very much a necrothread here, but I was thinking of doing this same thing and just install plain Debian on my 4312S

Was it fairly easy to just access the BIOS and change the boot device to a USB installer disk?

I've done that with a ReadyNAS 2304 and, with its convenient DisplayPort connector, it was easy peasy 🙂

[rhpot1991]

I experimented with this and had success pulling the mounted USB boot drive (its screwed into the motherboard) and booting from a SATA drive after install.  Sadly you lose all the perks of ReadyNAS by going elsewhere and I haven't found a good upgrade solution that lets me:

1. Use different size drives.
2. Add drives for expansion at a later point.

TrueNAS, Unraid, vanilla Debian, and Open Media Vault all lack that combination.

For the video card I just tossed in a PCIE half height and then removed once I no longer needed it.

[a_carneiro]

I agree. I have also managed to remove the USB and boot from an SSD.

I ended up going with TrueNAS Scale as I wanted some of the features of ZFS but the lack of expandability (which has been "coming soon" for several years now, apparently) is a pain.

On the plus side, the hardware is still pretty decent so it's good to unlock some more possibilities now that ReadyNAS OS is dead... 🙂