sturgismike

No easy way to replace the cable, for me at least. I'm in a wheelchair and this system is HEAVY and hard to shift around. Would require a bit of disassembly to get it done, so i'm doing an end run instead. I have an icydock on the way to go into the 3 5 1/4 bays, i'll shift the drive up there and ignore the problematic built in slot. Its much easier to pop an icy dock in for me than it would be to get it moved around to get the cable swapped. (The design is kinda destined for failure on that particular slot anyway, it makes a really sharp crimping style 180 turn to reach the first sata port on the board. ) This will work out perfect. I'll end up with a potential 8 drives (connected to the h310) and cache drive can be stuck anywhere as long as I can get power to it, and hook it to the onboard ports. I'll be careful to not wiggle anything between now and hardware, and pray that it doesn't go wonky again.

THANK YOU! I switched sata ports, and wiggled the cable. (my suspicion is that its the cable,) started up again, and the drive was found. It showed up in "unassigned devices" and I had to manually add it back in to the right spot, but it seems to be rebuilding now. Hoping I can find the right stuff to replace this cable assembly. Till then I won't breathe. Here is the most recent diagnostic. tower-diagnostics-20180309-1626-AfterSataPortSwitch.zip

Here are the diags from after reboot, but the drive shows as not installed so i'm guessing you hit the nail on the head. Going to shut it down and check cables. (weird that it was fine and working then.. Not.) tower-diagnostics-20180309-1604-afterrestart.zip

I had been having some slowdown issues in one area: installing docker images. I think now that the highwater has shifted writes to my second data drive, it has revealed some (bad) issues with the second drive. I recently added some things to my nextcloud, and next thing I know the drive fails to write and pretty much booms. I'm in emulated mode now, and have a 4tb red on the way. Until it arrives, is there a way to minimize chance of my currently working 2tb data failing? Also, it was recommended that I post fresh diagnostics here to be checked over. (perhaps to see if the drive is really failing or if its another issue entirely?) So here it is. If there are problems that show in the logs, would anyone mind letting me know what they are and what they mean so that I can better handle things on my own? TIA for any advice and guidance. tower-diagnostics-20180309-1534.zip

Well. One of my disks has just gone into an error state. I'm wondering if the weird delays were because of this impending failure. (Both my data drives are not nas drives, and are pretty old. Luckily my 4tb parity drive is a new acquisition. Time to buy a drive I guess. Off to research about drive replacement procedures, and to ask questions in another forum, but will ask here in this inappropriate place too.. I have enough space on the working drive to accept all the data that would be on the failed one. Is it possible to just remove the failed drive, and rebuild to the remaining drive while I wait for my replacement?

The z800 is working great. Got the h310 working fine (after using the electrical tape trick), drives shifted over. CPUs upgraded to 5670s. Haven't added additional GPUs yet because of crypto currency based inflation. Really impressed with unraid, its works really well. (And thanks to fix common errors, and tips and tweaks my writes to the array are pretty darn zippy now) EDIT: I should have known better than to tempt fate. One of my old 2tb drives just failed. Oops.

I figured that is what I'd need to do. Hate to move my cache drive to a sata II port, but I'll probably still be better off. (I don't have much using the cache as it is and write directly to the array for the most part, so not that big a loss actually) Thanks much for the tip, and confirmation.

First diagnostic is during a docker add. tower-diagnostics-20180309-1014.zip As i'm typing this, the screen still shows this.. The screen has now updated once so I've added another diagnostic post update. Its currently stuck and non-updating at the following screen. Updates do seem to be coming a bit faster since the server and windows reboot, but its not even remotely comparable to what it was before this started happening. (it has updated once more now, no need to add another pic, you get the gist. Once its done I'll post a final diagnostic.) I have a feeling that I've shot myself in the foot some way, I just don't know how. Still downloading (slow connection, around 4Mbps at the best of times.) Ok, done, and noticed that the last 4 digits of the first two diagnistics are the same. If this is a time tag, does it indicate nothing changed at all in the diags, or that it was less than a minute since the last one? (did I mention its running a little better?) I'm also wondering, I moved all my drives from the onboard controller to a flashed h310, and had a message that trim couldn't be done (I've since disabled the trim schedule while I decide what to do) Is it possible something got corrupted on the ssd that could be causing this? (Its the only other thing I can think of that happened around the same time) Thanks for looking into this! tower-diagnostics-20180309-1014 (2).zip tower-diagnostics-20180309-10373(3).zip

I've been looking for the answer to an issue with no luck, so I guess its time to ask. A few days ago, during a docker install using CA, my internet went down. I didn't realize it at first until I saw that the screen wasn't updating install progress. I gave things way longer than necessary to actually complete or fail, but the screen never updated, and I ended up going to a new tab, then back to apps (once my internet was back.) Just to make sure things were clean I used cleanup appdata and sure enough, there was an 'orphan' there. I removed it and assumed all was ready to try again. Unfortunately, ever since then, something has gone sideways. Doing docker installs does work, but the screen doesn't update properly, though eventually screen updates do occur. It can take 2 to 3 minutes before anything appears on screen (showing completed layers, and layers in progress) at which point there are again no updates for a few minutes. Its frustrating when it seems that a tiny layer is just NOT downloading. I have been forcing myself to just walk away and not look at the screen until the docker install is done, and the screen shows that it is so. I have rebooted, cleaned up appdata (as mentioned) and even used the programmers prayer (finger crossing) but am unsure how to get screen updates working as they should again. (hmm, though it just popped in to my head it might be a good idea to reboot my windows box too.. Perhaps its on my side, rather than server side. Will try that next) Any and all suggestions welcome, and I'll post an update here if I get it working (or if I don't) Oh, and I have a second unraid that I fired up and it does properly update the screen during docker installs, so there is that. EDIT: Nope, restarting my machine had no affect. Doing an install now, and still waiting for the initial screen update.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! (insert a whole bunch more thank yous here) This post has likely saved me from a bunch of hours and frustration, as well as keeping me from pulling my hair out. Thankfully, the ebay seller I got my card from knew enough to direct me to this post.

EDIT: Looks like I got lucky. The system I received has the later boot block, so I can upgrade to 2 56xx cpus. Also, though the listing didn't mention a second installed cpu, there it was. Finally, modifying my question about passthrough, the system has a firepro 5800 installed in slot 2 so at least I know what one of my cards will be. (assuming it is possible to use the card that way) Off to research and read more. Again, thanks for any suggestions anyone might offer. Hey, this is my first post, hoping for some guidance. First a slight bit of background. My media collection has recently grown to the point where I had to find a storage solution. I started with freenas, which is very nice, but as so many here seem to agree, adding storage to freenas piecemeal just doesn't work affordably. I ended up trying unraid, and so far am lovin it. Here is the issue.. Currently i'm running on an athlon x2 with 8G memory, which runs surprisingly well, but I'm discovering that its not a great option for much experimentation. Toss plex on there, and a few other containers and it just doesn't have the oomph. (I did install a pci gig eth card which helped some things, but I just don't have enough processor to really TRY things) So I bought a z800 that should be here tomorrow, link to the specific machine below. z800 So my first question is the onboard storage controller settings. Based on research, I can choose either the raid + ahci mode (and NOT use raid of course) but i'm not sure the smart data will pass through so that unraid can see it. I think I read.. Somewhere that a person had successfully flashed the onboard controller to IT mode, but i'm rather afraid of bricking the thing. So, which would be the better choice for unraid? Straight sata mode limited to 4 connectors? Here is a little info re: the onboard. ### onboard sata controller SATA Emulation—Sets the SATA emulation mode with the following options: RAID + AHCI—both the RAID and AHCI OPROMs execute. This emulation mode is the default and offers the best performance and most functionality. IDE —offers standard SATA supports (four ports only). ####### I also picked up one of these: H310 flashed to IT mode I couldn't get the exact cables I need for the way the z800 is set up, so I ended up with the 8087 to sata plug (IE to plug directly into a drive) and then bought a couple SATA Socket to SATA Socket Extension Coupler Adapters to make it work until I can pick up a better set of cables. I only bought 2 because I'm unsure how well the couplers are made, so if anyone is interested I'll report on that once I get them in. Ok, so this is the beginning of my actual questions. #1 based on the pcie slot list below, if I want to run 2 video cards for passthrough, they should go into slots 2 and 5, correct? #2 what affordable low to mid range cards will work well for passthrough? The only game I really play is UO, so a high end card would be wasted, but it shouldn't be a slug either. #3 can I add an el cheapo card to slot 1 as primary for unraid to use? And if so, any recommendations for that card? (there is a card in the sys now but I've no clue yet what it is #4 I think the onboard storage controllers are linked to the pcie lanes used by slot 7. IF I can confirm this, and still want to use the onboard too, should I avoid plugging the H310 into that slot? #5 Since I'll only be able to plug 2 drives into the H310 at first, would it make sense to put the 4tb red parity drive, and the cache ssd on the add on card? (sata 3 vs sata 2 on the board) #6 Once I have the cabling situation resolved so that I can use all 8 ports on the h310, it would make sense to just disable the onboard and hook all drives to it, correct? And possibly add another card if I end up with more than 8 drives, rather than use the onboard? #7 just occurred to me.. I doubt that the power supply in this machine is the 1100 watt, more likely the 850, would this badly hamper my choice of video cards and max number of drives? #8 just popped in to my head too.. If using passthrough so that I can have a couple vms running local to the machine, is it possible to plug in keyboard and mouse to the current ports and assign them to pass through that way, or does one need to have a separate usb controller for each? (Argh! 2 more slots gone?) ########## Slot configuration Slot 1 - PCIe2 x8(4) Slot 1 option ROM download (Enable or Disable) Slot 2 - PCIe2 x16 Slot 2 option ROM download (Enable or Disable) Slot 3 - PCIe x8(4) Slot 3 option ROM download (Enable or Disable) Slot 4 - PCIe2 x16(8) Slot 4 option ROM download (Enable or Disable) Slot 5 - PCIe2 x16 Slot 5 option ROM download (Enable or Disable) Slot 6 - PCI 32/33 Slot 6 option ROM download (Enable or Disable), and latency timer and speed Slot 7 - PCIe2 x16(8) -- onboard uses these lanes? Slot 7 option ROM download (Enable or Disable), and latency timer and speed ########## Thanks for any and all input/recommendations/suggestions. Normally I'm pretty good at figuring things out, but for some reason tossing a server grade machine into the mix, and the research overload I've subjected myself to, right at the moment my brain is mush. Can't wait till I can upgrade to dual cpus! Probably the 5520, though i'm kinda hoping it'll take the 56xx series. (I swear, the tinkering is more fun than the using)