outofmysystem

New key issue and all working fine. Avoid the Kingston DataTraveler 100G3 USB 3.0.

So it turns out the issue isn't with the motherboard, it's with the Kingston DataTraveler 100G3 USB 3.0 stick I'd bought to replace the ageing USB 2.0 stick that was in the previous system. I'd recently gotten my registration key moved to this new one, but despite everything I've tried, it will not cold boot from it. I had a spare ADATA USB 2.0 stick laying around and restored the same backup that went on to the Kingston DataTraveler to it and it cold boots just fine. I've mailed LimeTech to see if they can move the registration key to the ADATA one as it seems to solve my cold boot problem.

So this USB Key is new and was created using the unRAID USB Creator and I chose to install it with a flash backup I'd previously taken from when it was in the old machine and I took the option to enable UEFI. I've downloaded a trial version of unRAID (same version v 6.9.2) to another USB and did not take the UEFI option in the Creator. It cold boots perfectly. I don't know where this leaves me but something from the backup that's causing this boot issue? When the system's up, it all works perfectly.

Hi. The EFI folder exists.

The unRAID USB key is fine - stuck it in another machine which booted into the menu immediately. A Windows 10 Install Media USB Key works in the new machine without issue - boots up straight away. Just cannot get unRAID to boot without first going into the BIOS and then exiting. The intention was not to have a monitor attached as the server will be in the attic so this is really frustrating.

Well, I tried switching USB ports and that didn't help. I've disabled both Fast Boot options and still the same. Black screen with a single line. I can't get to the BIOS at that point by hitting the Del key. Need to remove the USB, reset and then hit Del. Reinsert the USB key once the BIOS is open, exit the BIOS and it boots from USB. Driving me potty.

Thanks for the reply. I remember there's 2 fast boots, one MSI one and one it says is related to Windows 8. The last one I know is enabled so will give that a try and will swap USB ports too.

Built a new system based on an MSI Z940-A Pro motherboard with an i5-10600 and I'm having a nightmare getting this thing to boot correctly. My older system was on it's way out so I built the new rig and moved the disks across. The array is fine and all is working ok once it's up, but once I reboot, I'm met with a blank screen with a single underscore. The only thing that works is removing the USB key, booting into the BIOS, changing nothing, re-insert the USB and exit the BIOS. UnRAID boots correctly then. Things I've tried Used unRAID USB Creator to create a new USB drive with UEFI enabled and restored from a flash backup Installed a 1030 GT graphics card although the intention was to use only the iGPU for Plex Quick Sync Switched from UEFI to CSM in the BIOS Disabled any UEFI boot devices Enabled only UEFI boot devices Has anyone seen similar behaviour? As long as I go into the BIOS first with the USB key removed, will it then boot correctly.

Well, that last parity rebuild finished successfully. I guess I'll go and check a few things that live on Drive 2 and see if they look intact. This morning I took out all of the SATA cables and replaced them with ones I had and actually slotted 4 of them into the Marvell SATA ports (I know!). So either one of the SATA cables is dodgy or one of the SATA ports on the board. This morning I ordered an LSI SAS 9207-8i and cables which will arrive next week which should remove either the ports or the SATA cables from the equation. Seeing as Disk 2 passed an extended SMART test, I'm wondering if the reads errors were down to the ports/cables, but don't know enough to make that call. I'm hoping I'm out of the woods now but thank you SO much for your help and patience with this. Coming back to the thread over multiple days is very much appreciated.

So, I've changed out all of the SATA cables and reseated everything. All 6 HDDs are online with the parity drive showing as emulated. A Parity-Sync/Data-Rebuild operation is running at the moment but it'll likely fail like the rest. I've dug out an old server that only has 6 SATA ports so I've got no way to add all 6, plus the SSD cache drive. I can order a PCI Express (PCIe) SATA III (6G) SSD Adapter but that will take a while to arrive. Annoyingly, I just found 2 x 3TB Reds in the old server I forgot I had so could have done a straight swap for the dodgy disk. I think it's possible to get the data off the faulty disk 2. Would using unBalance to scatter the data from it be an option or should I just bite the bullet and rsync all it's contents to another server on my network?

Yeah, that's fine. The extended SMART test ended without errors. tower-diagnostics-20210807-0321.zip tower-smart-20210806-1955.zip

So for this, would I just copy all of the files to another server or should I copy them over an existing drive in the array? I'm a bit confused by that, sorry.

Thanks very much for all your help with this. I definitely wasn't running an extended SMART test and rebuilding parity at the same time. I figured out I was setting the disks to spin down which was interrupting the SMART test so I rebooted and I'm running that again and hopefully that will complete overnight and I'll upload the results. It's possible there is an underlying hardware problem as this server is quite old, but maybe a completed test will shed some light. I haven't seen anything in remote syslog during the multiple crashes I've had when trying to rebuild parity.

Hi. It literally just stopped after running for a while - I saw up to 20%. I was watching it tick over then when I looked again, the screen looked like it hadn't been running any test. Is it worth just cutting my losses and proceeding with the parity swap? I can't tell if it's the board that's defective or just this drive that's causing all the problems. Where can I track the extended SMART test if not on the GUI? Is there a log file i can tail so I can keep an eye on it? Thanks - Edit - found on Reddit.

Last time I checked, the extended SMART test on Disk 2 was at 20% then it just seemed to stop. unRAID GUI now shows "No self-tests logged on this disk". No errors or anything appeared on the remote syslog and the server remained up. Latest diags attached. tower-diagnostics-20210806-1254.zip

Hi again. I had moved all the HDDs off the Marvell controller and left just the SSD cache drive attached to it. I've set up remote syslog and will try one more time. I have got backups of most important stuff to a 2nd unRAID server but the failing one is my media server so I'd really like to save the array. The 2nd server doesn't have enough SATA ports to move the failing server's disks to it to test so I'm now torn between buying a new SATA controller card to put in the failing server in case it's the motherboard's SATA ports that are the issue, or biting down and building a whole new rig and trying the disks in that. edit - Reset connections and running extended SMART test on disk 2

So close. Made it to 92.4% before the server crashed again. Array is currently stopped as I disabled autostart. I don't believe anything has been written to the array since I started this process. I don't have VMs and I stopped and disabled docker right at the start before attempting to swap out the parity drive for the larger one. I've attached the latest diagnostics. Is the next thing to try New Config - Trust Parity and then the parity swap procedure? Thanks. tower-diagnostics-20210805-2214.zip

Thanks for taking the time to look at the diags. Disk2 is the one that's been showing read errors and the one that will be swapped out eventually. Earlier, I added the original parity drive back in and the resync is at 25% with 4 hours to go. Fingers crossed this actually completes. I can't remember which drives are on which controllers but I'll avoid the Marvell ones once I see how these steps finish, then I'll try a parity swap. Thanks!

Thanks for the reply. Will keep the memtest in mind as the server doesn't currently have a monitor attached. The data rebuild is at 20% currently but the estimated completion keeps growing (now at 21 hours to go). I'm wondering if the parity swap procedure should have been the way to go as I still have the original parity disk available that could be put back in. - Edit - Estimated finish went as far as 28 hours then the server hard crashed again. Nothing in the remote syslog. Sigh.

I've got a really old unRAID server that's been running for years on a X58A-UD3R motherboard. 5 x WD Reds 3TB and a single WD Red 3TB parity drive, plus a 256GB Samsung 850 EVO cache. One of the data drives has been reporting read errors so thought I'd swap out the parity drive for a 10TB WD Gold Enterprise. I pulled the parity drive (which I've retained) and erased and cleared the Gold. Now the parity resync/data rebuild is getting to various stages (4%, 7% etc) then the server crashes and restarts. This has happened at least 5 times so far and I can't even get close to having this complete. I've seen a few disk-related errors in the syslog and captured the diagnostics with them happening but can't predict when the server will crash again but I'm sending syslog to another server in the meantime. Any pointers on how to recover from this mess? I've got several more 10TB WD Gold Enterprise disks that are pre-clearing on another machine at the moment but don't have any spare WD Reds 3TB. I could salvage a 2TB drive from another server if it'll help to get past this. Thanks. tower-diagnostics-20210805-1007.zip

Can I ask where you're seeing these errors so I can check on them myself once I've reseated everything?

Done. Thank you. tower-diagnostics-20200319-1553.zip

unRAID 6.8.3 I recently decided to add a couple of 3TB Reds to an existing array (1 parity and 3 3TB Reds). For reasons I'm unsure of, I lost one of the existing disks during this process so ended up pre-clearing it and the 2 new ones. Since then unRAID has been working mostly ok but Sickchill has been acting weirdly with random crashes. I tried to run Backup Appdata and noticed a warning that a the USB and XML directory locations I'd previously used were invalid (/mnt/user/backups/unRAID/). Sure enough, /mnt/user does not exist any more on this server but /mnt/user0 is still there though. How screwed am I and what can I do to fix this plz? Thanks.

Well got a shock this morning as woke up to pretty much everything deleted from my TV directory. I had SickRage running perfectly for months up until this recent drama so started afresh with SIckChill last night. Set it up with Sab last night and had it downloading shows ok. The only thing that wasn't working was moving completed downloads into the correct sub folder but was going to deal with that today. I'd ran Add Shows - Add Exisitng shows and the library was populated (and is still populated), but pretty much everything is not on the server any longer. I haven't had to set up Sickx and Sab in a while so I must have made an incorrect setting somewhere. Any ideas where to look to see how this has happened?

Came here because having the same issue with slow speeds using WinSCP after upgrading to 6.6.1. Jerky_san's advice "On the connect prompt click advanced, connections, and deselect optimize connection buffer size" fixed it for me too.