gumby327

my computer is starting to act like the three grand I dumped into it. All the headache stemmed around a 12gbs HBA SAS controller. I picked up an older one since then and have it in the main server now, like it and I bought a second one for the other machine. I spent tipple on the double speed and newer chip. But I think it overheated somewhere in it's 5 year life and is completely flaky, It may barely survive a parity check then die hours later, a lot of boots it lasted 3 hours and died.

Last night after replacing the entire computer around the HBA SAS controller I continued to see CRC fails. So, well me being me I had a rock solid backup server I took the controllers and switched them from my backup to my main computer. And now we have the answer. These controllers are all old crap, and the best crappy one I have is actually the worst. Has nothing to do with unRAID or CPU's or motherboards, no. It was the $232 SAS controller card all along. So, now in my backup server I now have a ton of CRC errors after all night parity checking.

my new build.

It has been running now for about a week and the improvements are: 1. The HBA controller, same old one, is now in an 8x slot. 2. The HBA controller has a 1.5 inch fan cooling it. 3. The Strix ATA full motherboard is a ton more flexible and works better in unRAID for my needs. 4. The NODE 804 is now relegated down to my backup PC. The Fractal Designs R5 is the right box for the job because every hard drive has fresh air forced over it. 5. I went to Version: 6.10.0-rc3 up from the stable release. That made my thermals start working. What I am seeing is full parity check and no problems yet.

No, and that is my guess is that the HBA controller overheated on me. It all works good with 7 drives. When I add 8 things work for a bit then erode fast then poof it locks the disk. The replacement HBA controller is coming. I have a RAID controller here as well I may just force it to HBA.

well, brand new motherboard, and same old problem, so the only thing remaining is the HBA controller card is bad.

So, the experiment to place it in a x16 slot, load it up with 8 drives and run it was a fail. Shortly after the array rebuild it's failed drive, another one died. So, I know when this goes to be my backup server, there will be no parity, and it will have only 5 drives. In fact, for that case it does not even need the SAS HBA, so I probably will just set that card aside. Either the drive allocation in the motherboard or chip is bad or the card has a flaw. The new motherboard has a lot more strength and is will be a full mini SAS cable not these tiny ones. But that board has 8 SATA ports out the gate, so all I will need off the add on card is 3 or 4 more lanes.

I really wish someone would have helped me catch my mistake. That is RAID, not HBA. I just thank my lucky stars I did not install it and learn afterwords as it initialized a RAID array and all my data was gone.

I have had Gumby running steady no errors for over two days and locked in the actual problem. It was a HBA SAS PCIe 8x resting in a PCIe 4x slot. I always knew it would have restricted bandwidth in that slot, but what I had never guessed is the strategy it was using was port multiplier. It says half lanes so multiply for the other SAS rail. It was fairly OK for 7 drives, but when you placed a 8th drive in you started getting CRC errors. Today I am going to lock in that as the problem by placing it in a 16x GPU slot and hook up the 8th drive and do a parity check. That will tell me the machine would make a good back up server. Second thing I will do is build out Gumby with more premium specs. I ordered a new parts list for Gumby: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09GP7V2W5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Q2Z11QE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V6132NX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HS23QZO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The existing Node 804 is being demoted to backup "Pokey" server and getting one of my two HBA SAS controler cards. Since it has only one second x16 size lane that is x4 it can never be a VM machine as well as a large array server. So, I have a spare AMD Ryzen 5 5600x 6 core 12 thread processor. That will make it stable and powerful beyond it's needs as a backup and reverse proxy.

so, that is the final deal. The PCIe architecture of that Micro ATX B550M has a limit and I flat out exceeded it. The machine cannot do Windows VM and also handle HBA loads same time and it seems to be about one express lane short in overall bandwidth.

new drive is in. what I did was took array drive8 and assigned it to slot for drive1. So, it is on the motherboard SATA now. It has been running clean for a couple of hours. What I am not sure about is the LSI Broadcom SAS 9300-8i is x8 and it is in a x4 slot. I wonder if it is doing a multiplier for the 4 lanes, and if that is the case that has been noted as a problem with unRAID.

ok, one more time.

I have more brand new disks here, but there comes a point where you toss in the towel.

yes, but at a half hour it started counting them (CRC errors) up again.