MicroServer Gen8, select individual boot drive order, not just type

[EpicLPer]

Hello there,

So I own a MicroServer Gen8 (to be exact: G1610T) and I use the ODD port to connect a boot SSD with Windows on it. It's working fine and I can boot it, but only as long as I have all 4 HDDs in the trays removed when booting the server, else it'll loop at the "Attempting to boot from C:" screen, then jumps to network boot and back again.

It seems the server is trying to find a boot section on the HDDs first, fails and skips the SSD on the ODD port entirely and jumps straight to the next boot device type in the list. Now here's the problem: I can't set individual drive priorities in the BIOS, only what type of device it should take first.
As example 1: HDD, 2: CDROM, 3: NIC.
But I can't set it like 1: SSD, 2: HDD1, 3: HDD2, etc.

Is there any way to fix this? I found that some people use the MicroSD slot with GRUB installed and use that to boot from the SSD but I don't want additional components which could potentially fail simply because HP missed out on including an important function which even cheap 30$ motherboards and other server manufacturers have...

Thanks already and best regards,
Stefan

[Jimmy Vance]

I thought I had already replied to this, but I don't seem to find it now.  If you search through the forum you will see where others have asked the same question. The ODD port was never tested, nor was it in the scope of the product to have a disk drive attached to this port.  Users have been able to make this work either using the RAID function of the controller, or setting the controller to legacy mode.  Another good place for information is the homservershow forums http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/forum/88-ms-gen-8/