Ins 420i

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The4 Series nomenclature arrived in 2013 when BMW hived off the 3 Series Coup/Convertible range into its own product line which included the coup, convertible and (oddly) the 4-door Gran Coup. The latest incarnation of the 4 Series arrived in the middle of 2020 with the G22/G23/G26 respectively, to a host of pursed lips thanks to the radical kidney grill re-design that made it from the concept car at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show through to production.

Finished in Tanzanite Blue metallic with Vernasca Oyster leather trim and aluminium highlights, this is a very appealing colour combination. In addition to the standard M Sport package, this 430i was optioned with the Visibility and Comfort packages. Behind the wheel the experience is very BMW with the fully electronic instrument cluster using the right colours and fonts for the very easy to read dials.

I used to think that the modern Holden Monaro was the best proportioned two-door coup in Australia, but I have to say the profile of this new 4 Series is just that little bit better. The lines from front to rear flow perfectly giving the impression that the car is longer than its 4.77m length.

The curvature of the roofline from the A-Pillar to the boot-lid is considerably smoother than the previous model and the C-Pillar now morphs into the rear quarter panel beautifully from any angle. So much so that from a couple of perspectives, the 430i possesses some Aston Martin DB9 visual characteristics.

The tail-light assembly is now almost all LED technology and sweeps from either side of the number plate to the outer edges of the rear which keeps the line from the bottom of the rear window to the boot-lid lip nice and low. The reversing camera is integrated into the BMW badge meaning fingerprints are less likely when opening the boot. Speaking of the boot, there is easily room for a couple of sets of golf clubs.

At the front, yes, the grille takes some getting used to, but you will learn to love it. The chrome surrounds on the 430i M Sport do draw attention to it. However, as you will see with the 420i M Sport below, the addition of a $500 option to extend the BMW Individual high-gloss Shadow Line to the kidneys does soften their appearance.

Much like the exterior, the interior of the 430i M Sport has been updated to reflect the needs and wants of drivers in 2021. Beautiful lightness, near-perfect visibility, and a cockpit that for me felt as much a BMW as it was the first time I drove one nearly thirty years ago.

The electric seats for the driver and front passenger are very comfortable and thanks to lumbar support and multiple memory positions, your perfect driving position is only the press of a button away.

On our press vehicle, the gear-shift and BMW iDrive surrounds were finished in a blended aluminium treatment that did take the luxury feel of the interior down a little, but the upside is that it does hide fingerprints much more effectively than a black piano or high-gloss timber finish.

Rear-seat space is exactly what you would expect in a two-door coup but unlike similar German coups, minor movements of the driver and passenger seats will see space open up. Access however, does not improve.

My experience with the 430i M Sport was all contained in the city. Lots of stop-start driving with precious few opportunities to open the taps. That being said, I found the 430i M Sport very easy to live with. Access was far easier than I expected with doors that are over 1.3m long.

As with all BMWs the driving position is perfect once you find it. The seats took a little getting used to and once I found my sweet-spot all was well in the world. Driver systems such as Active Pedestrian Safety and Adaptive M Suspension are excellent in the city where roads can be unpredictable and pedestrians can do anything at anytime. The Head-Up Display has been overhauled in the 4 Series and provides more information in perfect line of sight for the driver.

Several cameras and sensors around the 4 Series take care of parking and the Parking Assistant Plus system brings it all together to take the stress out of parking. As I said above, the boot is commodious and thanks to the BMW aerodynamicists really easy to access with the low boot-line.

After ninety minutes of mundane Good Friday traffic, I peeled off the Hume Highway to make my way northwest towards Cowra. As soon as the 100km/h limit came into effect on the north-side of Goulburn, the 420i M Sport came alive.

The 430i and 420i share the same 2-litre 4-cylinder B48 engine and thanks to exhaust and tuning mods at the factory, the 430i produces 195kW and the 420i a none-too-shabby 135kW. Whilst I thought I might not have been too smart scheduling my reviews of the new 4 Series in the order I had, it turns out that I may have accidentally discovered that a bit more oomph is more usable in the city and that less weight and better fuel consumption are better on the open road.

The interior of the 420i M Sport is as you might expect very different to the 430i M Sport. The seats are now a combination of Alcantara and Sensatec leather with contrasting blue stitching that shows glimpses of the famous M colours.

Originally users were getting Error Type: Connect. I found that the 420i devices were using port 139 for smb but other working Kyoceras in the office were using 445, so I changed the 420i devices to that port. Users now get Error Type: Setting.

The 4 Series is available in eight colours. Alpine White is the only freebie while Black Sapphire, Arctic Race Blue, Portimao Blue, San Remo Green and Mineral White are $1538 each (or part of the Visibility Package). Tanzanite Blue and Dravit Grey are a hefty $2962.

The 420i comes with 19-inch wheels, 10-speaker stereo, 10.25-inch touchscreen, sat nav, LED headlights with auto high beam, head-up display, power front seats, lighting package, auto-parking with reverse assistant, synthetic leather and Alcantara interior, Live Cockpit professional (fully digital dash), wireless phone charging and DAB radio.

Beautiful and functional, Spire i-Stands provide a safe, sturdy, and resilient solution to isolate your studio monitors. Featuring beveled edges and a stunning look to enhance the feel of your studio. The isolators are designed to keep all movement on-axis... to move in the direction of the speakers cones' travel, while resisting movement in other directions. Place your monitors on the 420i or 360i and you will notice a definite tightening of the low end and improved stereo imaging of your existing speakers.

Did a search for this controller and mostly found initial setup issues. However i have unraid up and running on this card, it is built into my DL380p Gen8 machine. My question is i have noticed the drives are not hot swappable with this controller and i must shut down the whole machine to swap or add drives which involves some work done in the HP raid array utility. Is there a way to make the 420i hot swappable with unraid? And if not, will getting a HP240 controller make it hot swappable?

NOTE: In cases where devices are added/replaced/removed, etc., the instructions say "Power down" ... "Power up". If your server's hardware is designed for hot/warm plug, Power cycling is not necessary and Unraid is designed specifically to handle this. All servers built by LimeTech since the beginning are like this: no power cycle necessary.

Even without RAID controller no point in hot swapping array or pool disks since Unraid won't do anything with the new disk until you assign it, and you have to stop the array to make assignment changes.

stopping the array is a given, however the goal is to eject the drive and swap without powering off the machine. This is how this controller normally works. However with unraid you have to set all drives to raid 0 on the controller itself so unraid can see the drives. This is what i believe is the cause of not being able to eject the drives while on.

The TASKalfa 420i incorporates extremely durable components that guarantee efficient and reliable operation to meet the demanding requirements of busy office environments. The TASKalfa 420i provides effective productivity and maximum flexibility.

I have some fresh out of the box HP Proliant Generation 8 servers which have the HP 420i disk controllers built into the motherboard. Once upon a time the disk controller was a PCI card but now in Gen 8 Proliant it is on the motherboard. Regardless of this feature the controller seems to be unable to detect third-party disks.

HP sells a pile of disks with their brand name on them but they do not have 2TB SATA in the 2.5 inch format however Seagate does. So I have about forty disks that are the ST2000NX0243 disks. These are Enterprise SATA disks with 2TB and are 4KB sector size. They should be ideal for storage, however the HP 420i controller shows zero physical disks installed.

I called HP tech support with the details and they were quick to hang up the phone as soon as they heard these were Seagate disks and not HP's customised and enhanced Seagate disks. Is there anything here that I can do or just buy an Adaptec disk controller or are the new HP Proliant servers really unable to handle big 4KB sector sized disks?

You went into this knowing HP didn't sell the disk capacity you wanted. There may be a reason for that. Does that mean you found generic Gen8 disk caddies/carriers to install these 2TB drives? If so, those could be a problem.

Have you upgraded the firmware on the system and components; specifically the RAID controller? (The current version is 6.34) - That's important, especially if the present controller firmware predates the introduction of the 2TB disks.

Did you use the HP Smart Storage Administrator utility to check the array configuration, or did you only use the BIOS Option ROM Configuration for Arrays (ORCA) menu? If the former, please show the output of the controller configuration.

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