Rajahal

Great news! Will you please share the version of BIOS you are using? You should see it flash on the screen right when your server boots up (though of course if you are running it headless, there is no screen).

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Agreed, avoid transcoding when possible. I think the best reason to transcode is if you already have a PS3 or Xbox 360 and don't want to spend money on a dedicated HTPC. If you have the option to build or buy a dedicated HTPC (and take the time to choose a good one!), then transcoding shouldn't be necessary. I prefer to have a low power server that runs 24/7 and a higher power (yet still modest) HTPC that runs only when I need it.

I agree with everything above. While I can't guarantee that the motherboard will work, it looks good on paper. The onboard NIC will work just fine with unRAID 5.0 beta or RC, both of which are safe to use. unRAID 5.0 stable is right around the corner as well. I posted some detailed photos of the Norco SS-500 with the fan and fan plate removed in the Greenleaf Hardware and Software Blog (scroll down to the Fan Replacement section). I suggest that instead of removing the fans entirely you might try running them at half speed, which you can do by changing the position of one of the jumpers on the yellow circuit board. The instructions as to which jumper needs to be changed are printed on the side of the box in which the cage is shipped.

Looks like a great build a_n_d_y. My only comment is that you'll have to run unRAID 5.0 beta or RC as 4.7 doesn't support the Realtek 8111E NIC. Best of luck with your build, and have fun!

Sorry guys, I haven't had the chance to start another round of motherboard testing due to budget constraints and other active projects. As Apex77 said, the ECS A885GM-A2 (V1.1) is still my go-to budget board for 15 and 20 drive builds as long as it remains available, especially at that price!

Thanks UhClem! I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the drive is just toast, but I'll keep playing around with it to see if I can get something to recognize it.

FYI, I received them both today and they are missing full-sized brackets Guess I'll have to dig through my parts bin...

I don't see any errors in your syslog, but a few of your drives are running at SATAI speeds. Since the drives themselves are capable of SATAII, then your motherboard must be the limitation. If you are sure that your motherboard supports SATAII, then the likely culprit is a setting in the BIOS. Look through your BIOS for the SATA controller settings and set your drives to AHCI. This setting may be in the southbridge configuration screen.

I would swap number 2 and 3. Once you get anything close to 24 drives, it seems getting double fault protection is more important than getting more drives in. Just my .02. I'm sure others have different priorities and opinions. I see your point, but I purposefully put them in that order due to my perception of the difficulty of each step. Adding support for more than 24 array drives does have its complications, as Tom explained here, but it is not nearly as large of a task as rewriting the way that unRAID calculates parity. The order of development I suggested would allow users with test arrays (and test data!) to troubleshoot the >24 drive support feature while the diagonal parity feature is being developed. I thinks this would be the most streamlined approach, but that is of course just my perception and opinion.

Here's what I personally would like to see: 1) Support for 24 array drives (1 parity and 23 data) included in 5.0 stable, whenever that may be available. 2) Support for more than 24 array drives in 6.0 beta1 - to be used on test drives (and data) only! 3) Support for diagonal parity or similar scheme for 2 drive fault tolerance in 6.0 beta2 4) Support for more than 24 array drives and diagonal parity released concurrently in 6.0 stable. Given the path that 5.0 has taken from beta, RC and hopefully soon to stable, I would estimate that steps 2 - 4 above would probably take 6 months to a year after 5.0 stable comes out. I'm perfectly comfortable with that.

I agree with MyKroFt that a single partition is easier to manage and the better way to go about it. However, if you still wanted to use a second partition for some reason, you could simply add the mount and share commands to your 'go' script located in your flash drive's config folder. Everything in that file gets executed on every boot. You would probably need to play with the timings (using the sleep command) so that all your add ons wait a few seconds before trying to access the new share.

You can play with the USB drive emulation settings. Try HDD, FDD, etc. one at a time until you find one that works.

The RAID 1 is certainly do-able, I know WeeboTech among others have pulled it off. I believe the hardware requirements are very specifi, and the setup isn't for the faint of heart. I personally wouldn't use that solution as it adds too much complexity to what is otherwise a very simple system. If you are concerned with the lack of parity protection on your cache drive, the simplest option is to not use a cache drive. Another option would be to modify how often the mover script runs - you could set it to run once per minute if you like. The simplest server will always be the most reliable. Adding these layers of complexity will just create more maintenance work on your end and it will make damage control that much more difficult.

I can't say absolutely that the i3 can handle 1080p mkv to wmv. All of my media is 720p. However, I know others have used this CPU in transcoding servers and I haven't heard any complaints of them not being able to handle 1080p. I don't know enough about ESXi at this point to advise you. Prostuff1, Johnm, and others are experts in that area. I doubt you'll need more than 8 GB of RAM unless you go with the ESXi route. I believe that this RAM is compatible, but I have not tested it personally.

Yeah, some backplanes would really clean that up. He could have mimicked the backblaze design pretty easily with the drives mounted vertically like that. I wonder what the second motherboard is for?

Unfortunately the label offers no advice regarding the jumpers. The only interesting info is: Maxtor Model: LXT340SY Serial No: 2A06101169 TLA No: 9644416 3 Made in: Singapore 1 Copyright 1998 A google search for the model number and the term 'jumper' came up with this: http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/maxtor/LXT-340SY-340MB-3-5-HH-SCSI1-SE.html There's a wealth of information regarding the jumpers at that link. This drive was the computer's boot drive at one point, and as far as I know it was the only hard drive installed (at least that was true at the time when I received the computer). The SCSI cable has only two connections and I arbitrarily connected one end to the card and the other end to the drive. I can try swapping the connectors if it matters. The connectors have a notch that only allow them to be inserted one way. I don't see a jumper labeled TE. Since the cable only has two connectors, I shouldn't need a SCSI terminator, correct? It is a 340 MB drive

I love these drives, I have two! I don't think they are a terribly good choice for an unRAID cache drive, however. You want a cache drive to have fast writes, but you don't really care about the reads. This drive is the opposite: normal writes (as they go to the platter), but fast reads (as they are buffered in the SSD portion of the drive). So this drive won't perform any better than a standard laptop hard drive when used as an unRAID cache drive. If you run lots of apps from your unRAID cache drive then this drive might be a good fit.

This is very common. Go into BIOS and reassign the USB flash drive as the first boot device. Disable all other boot devices.

Once you get your Pro license, configure your WDTV to have read-only access to the server (via User Level Security) to prevent this from happening.

Just because a drive passes the SMART test doesn't mean it is completely healthy. Can you post the SMART report for disk2? Have you added any new drives or other hardware to your server recently? Posting a full syslog might also be helpful.

It sounds more like a bad connection to me, but if you've already reseated everything then possibly the PSU itself is bad. Have you added a new drive or any other new hardware recently? Here's another test to run: 1) Disconnect all drives and other components such that only the motherboard is getting power. 2) Try to boot the server. If the PSU is at or near its limits, then reducing the strain on it could bring it back to life. Of course your server won't be usable without any drives connected, this is just a test to see if the PSU is still capable of supporting a low to modest load. If it does work without any drives, then try reconnecting 1-2 drives at a time to find the point at which it fails to boot.

See here for advice on sizing your power supply. If you don't have a power supply tester then you could also take your power supply to a local computer shop and ask them to test it for you (but make sure they aren't going to charge much!). But before doing any of this, you should just reseat (unplug and re-plug) all the power supply connections to the motherboard and other components.

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