Peter Curd

Sorry for the long delay @Frank1940, I tried so many things I ended up with a system that wouldn't boot for a bit. In answer to your questions the Dell BIOS did not show any disks at all with either configuration. If I had the existing disks connected then it showed them, only. The server was getting a bit old so I decided not to waste any more time on it and have replaced the motherboard with an ASRock B450 Pro4 (and bought new CPU and RAM to go with it). In this configuration it booted first time with the SSD on the SATA Controller and UNRAID is up and happy using the cache drive. I think we can say that the Dell BIOS just isn't compatible with extra SATA cards (or at least, not this one). I now have a Dell Optiplex I'll need to find a home for! Thanks for your help,

I've spent a couple of hours testing a few different scenarios and this is my result: I've formatted both disks tested back to a single exFAT volume in Windows using a USB to SATA reader before beginning. Original USB stick in laptop: Boots to Unraid Original USB stick in server: a) With nothing connected to SATA card: Boots to Unraid b) With SSD connected to SATA card: Does not boot, freezes on blinking cursor c) With new HDD (SATA2) connected to SATA card: Does not boot, freezes on blinking cursor New USB stick with fresh Unraid 6.8.1 in server: a) With nothing connected to SATA card: Boots to Unraid b) With SSD connected to SATA card: Does not boot, freezes on blinking cursor c) With new HDD (SATA2) connected to SATA card: Does not boot, freezes on blinking cursor e) With SSD connected to USB 2.0 SATA enclosure: Boots to Unraid, disk seen in UI f) With SSD connected to USB 3.0 (on USB 2.0 port) SATA reader: Boots to Unraid, disk seen in UI g) With new HDD (SATA2) connected to USB (on USB 2.0 port) SATA reader: Boots to Unraid, disk seen in UI No USB stick in server: a) With nothing connected to SATA card: Blank screen, keyboard responds b) With SSD connected to SATA card: Blank screen, keyboard responds c) With new HDD (SATA2) connected to SATA card: Blank screen, keyboard responds If the SATA card is interfering with boot order then it behaves differently depending on whether the UNRAID USB stick is inserted or not. It looks like I can use the USB 2.0 enclosure to add my SSD but since I want it as a cache drive this seems non-optimal.

That doesn’t make sense though, unless the bios for the controller card is overriding the bios from the motherboard because I can very definitely see the new disk in the MB bios and see that it’s not selected. I can also force boot from the USB and get the same behaviour. I wonder if it’s worth putting another OS on a disk and connecting to the controller to check. If it IS doing that is there a way to stop it? I’ve exhausted the options in the MB bios.

It is definitely booting from the flash drive, or at least it’s definitely not booting from somewhere else. I’ve forced the boot order manually several times and I should have said that when the flashing cursor appears the keyboard becomes unresponsive (including caps lock and num lock stopping) so it feels more like a crash than a bad boot order. I’ve tried both UEFI and normal BIOS boots and they both work fine without any disks connected to the controller card but stop with the same symptoms if a disk is connected. I’ve tested with multiple disks, including the disks already in the server so I don’t think it’s a bad disk either.

I just bought a Syba SY-PEX40039 2 port SATA card for my Optiplex 390 build and I cannot get it to work. Everything is fine when it’s installed but as soon as I connect a drive to it Unraid won’t boot - it stops with a flashing cursor before the boot menu comes up. Because it’s a Dell box I have no real controls in the bios to do anything. There is a brief Asmedia screen shown during boot which shows whatever disk I’ve connected but I can’t find any key combination to get into any settings of it. Is it not working because I can’t configure a setting because of the Dell bios or am I doing something wrong? This card is listed as “works out of the box” on the wiki.