wheel

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Posts posted by wheel

    v5.0.5 - ONE DRIVE DEAD, ONE DYING? - How best to rebuild?

    in General Support (V5 and Older)

    Posted

    My mind is blown.  I have no idea what happened here, but I totally had two disabled, red-status drives that have somehow restored themselves.

     

    I spot-checked a dozen files on Disk 13 and Disk 15 this morning.  Video and audio played perfectly fine, not even any lag in loading.

     

    I shut that sucker down until the weekend (when I'll have time to take everything apart and replace the drive cage), but wow... I feel pretty optimistic about those drives now.

     

    Of course, I'll be running through and testing every file on both as soon as I find a free weekend (ha!), but I think the vast majority of both drives survived.  And that is awesome.

     

    Now if my 6TB Preclear wasn't appearing to be on track for a 70-hour Preclear cycle... Ehh, I'll take the small miracles!

    v5.0.5 - ONE DRIVE DEAD, ONE DYING? - How best to rebuild?

    in General Support (V5 and Older)

    Posted

    Well, it rebuilt?

     

    I tried going into Disk 15 (one I thought dead previously) and lo and behold, a file structure appeared.  Unfortunately, my system hung when I tried going more than one folder deep, but I took this as a good sign, and began a non-correcting parity check.

     

    About an hour in, I noticed five disks (all in the same cage in the array) were running a little hotter than the rest (moved a fan accordingly; they're pretty stable in mid-40s now).  I think I have a dead or damaged hotswap cage fan; I've ordered a backup cage for same day delivery just to be safe.  Current plan is to let the non-correcting parity check finish, then assuming everything is OK (or looks OK) there, power everything down, remove ALL the cages (damaged one is on the bottom, and I don't think I can just unscrew and slide that one out without risk to the ones above it - seems like there's some stabilization at play, even with the screws, in this case), replace the sketchy case, reconnect everything (which with Unraid 5.0 shouldn't even matter which order I reconnect the cables, right?), and once it's back up and running, actually go and check the file system again.

     

    If it still hangs when I try and go more than one directory deep on Disk 15, I already have a Precleared 4tb ready to replace Disk 15 (since I thought it was dead anyways).

     

    Are there any other steps I should take prior to replacing Disk 15 if I take the above steps and everything seems fine?

     

    Also, Frank - is that a New GUI option?  I couldn't figure out how to access Health from the webgui I've been using on 5.0.5 (nothing to double click on main, just hyperlinks for each drive), and when I tried installing the New GUI through Utils, it looked like it pulled files down, but doesn't seem any different of a GUI upon reboot...

    v5.0.5 - ONE DRIVE DEAD, ONE DYING? - How best to rebuild?

    in General Support (V5 and Older)

    Posted

    So this is weird - been a couple of weeks since I dealt with this box, booted up this morning to make sure I was correctly identifying the dead drives I was replacing, and... Now I only have one redballed drive (13).  It seems like I (and unraid) were pretty damn positive both were missing before (per posts above), but now one's back?

     

    Unless anyone says "stop, this seems hairy," I'm going to proceed with a replacement of Disk 13 and attempt to rebuild it.

     

    What's the worst that could happen if I already accepted I lost 13 and 15, but 15 "dies" while rebuilding 13?  Anything other than 13/15 data loss?

     

    EDIT: Since I received errors before I left this box alone for a few weeks, if the disk DOES rebuild, it'll be rebuilding based on parity calculated on a disk with errors, right? Any weird consequences from that, or nothing worse than single disk data loss?

    Shopping Suggestions - Quiet, 8-12 Slots (one 2.5" cache), $1200 Budget

    in Unraid Compulsive Design

    Posted

    Photos coming, post-Preclear; but DAMN this thing is quiet.

     

    I'm seriously tempted to go ahead and buy a couple more of these cases with Newegg's crazy sale right now (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352020)... $80/ea!

     

    My two full size towers (loud beasts loaded with four hotswap cages each) may eventually be replaced by something like this... Is there something like the R4, noise-wise, that's built to hold 20 drives no problem?  Or at least 18 (14 MOBO plus a 4x extension card, assuming there are no higher-capacity MOBOs out there)?

    Shopping Suggestions - Quiet, 8-12 Slots (one 2.5" cache), $1200 Budget

    in Unraid Compulsive Design

    Posted

    OK, hardware problems resolved!  Mostly... My CPU fan is insanely loud, and it seems like it's due to the power supply wires being too close to the fan blades (sound gets better when I mess with the fan housing position, profuse bleeding notwithstanding).  Not sure if that's something I just try replacing by itself, or if there's a non-skilled solution, but that's not my big issue...

     

    I guess I'm going to need to hit the General Support forums now, because I can't recall this happening with my first two unraid builds.

     

    Booting up into unraid fine, per monitor; showing up on network fine, per router IP address.  However, loading the IP address in a browser gives a timeout error (which is weird, because the first time I booted into unraid successfully, per monitor, loading the IP address went to the Supermicro login page), and loading //tower (yeah, my other tower is offline) also gives a timeout error.

     

    Tried reformatting flash drive, reinstalling unraid, making bootable... Same problems.

     

    Part of me just wants to start the damn Preclears I've been trying to start for a week now through the monitor, but if this could be caused by a hardware error, I'd rather know now before locking my system up for a couple of days...

     

    Any thoughts here before I head to the general support forums?

     

    I really can't afford too many more late nights on this, work-wise, but I'm also at a point where I've sunk so much time and money in I can't give up.  Can't believe that after building two boxes fine already, I'm having so much trouble with this one... Maybe should've just paid the extra for Greenleaf or someone to build it.  Damn sad night.

     

    EDIT: And now the webgui loads.  I have no idea what was going on there, but it's fine now?

     

    So back to the fan noise issue... Not a big deal at the moment, but it's loud enough to defeat the purpose of the whole build (almost as loud as my full towers with four 5x3 cages!)

     

    Any advice on how to easily fix CPU Fan noise that (I think) is caused by the wires wrapping around it?

    Shopping Suggestions - Quiet, 8-12 Slots (one 2.5" cache), $1200 Budget

    in Unraid Compulsive Design

    Posted

    So, the PSU story.

     

    I might be color blind.

     

    So that green blinking light right next to the red light (or at least I assume it was a red light the first time around), that had me wondering what could be going on - I mean, clearly SOMETHING was getting to the board.

     

    I hook up the new PSU last night, board completely bare, sitting on the static bag.  Same damn thing. I'm starting to research how much of a pain it'll be to return my motherboard and figure out how much it'll cost to get another one in the mail, when I look at that red light one more time.

     

    This time, it actually looks like a blend of red and green.  Almost a yellow.

     

    It's f'n yellow.

     

    I can't say for certain it was yellow with the first PSU, but I definitely had the power switch connected to the board, and was getting no CPU fan spin when I tried switching the PSU on and hitting the power switch.  First time I hooked up the power switch to the board last night and tried powering up with the "yellow" light, BAM - worked just like it should.

     

    Part of me wants to hook the old PSU back up and make sure it was really red on night one, but I finally got everything back into the box and booting fine (sans RAM) last night, and I'm more into letting sleeping dogs lie these day.

     

    Moral of the story?  I don't know, maybe better glasses.  It REALLY looked red... almost feel like I WILLED it into yellow or something.  The UnRaid force is strong with this one (except during power failures and dual-disk deaths, apparently).

    Shopping Suggestions - Quiet, 8-12 Slots (one 2.5" cache), $1200 Budget

    in Unraid Compulsive Design

    Posted

    Problem one - stopped paying attention to RAM details and devoted that brain space to professional stuff sometime around the dawn of DDR, so UDIMM, ECC, hell, unbuffered... News to me. Honestly, was only a hobbyist as a kid, and was playing in a completely different league than you guys in my peak!  Not an excuse nor justification, just a little background.  I know just enough about building boxes to be dangerous...

     

    Problem two, yeah, multitasking and system building probably wasn't the best plan.  There may also have been beer involved.

     

    RE: same-day shipping, it's apparently a few major markets (NYC, LA, etc.) - and in my case, it was an OnTrac delivery service.

     

    Jomp: I was thinking of ordering two of these (need 6 more power connectors) from Monoprice, next day delivery if I order in a few hours; seems like they should work, but does anyone have any warnings before I find myself in another buy-first-investigate-later situation?

     

    http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10226&cs_id=1022604&p_id=8794&seq=1&format=2

     

    Also picking up for my overpriced 6tb-supporting eSATA dock:

     

    http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10226&cs_id=1022603&p_id=8791&seq=1&format=2

     

    And for my extra sata cables:

     

    http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10226&cs_id=1022601&p_id=8775&seq=1&format=2

    Shopping Suggestions - Quiet, 8-12 Slots (one 2.5" cache), $1200 Budget

    in Unraid Compulsive Design

    Posted

    OK, I got the PSU working (don't ask, it's embarrassing).

     

    Now I get POST code 15 when booting up, which google suggests is an ECC RAM issue, but that's impossible because I bought ECC RAM, right?

     

    Shit.  Checked my newegg history.  It's totally non-ECC.

     

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231568

     

    This is why I feel like an idiot every time I try putting an unraid box together...

     

    Edit: OK, *this* should work, right?

     

    http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-1600MT-PC3-12800-240-Pin-CT2KIT102472BD160B/dp/B008EMA5VU/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1422342764&sr=8-5&keywords=16gb+ECC+ram+unbuffered

     

    Going to order first thing in the morning for same-day delivery if so... I am GETTING THIS DAMN THING RUNNING TOMORROW.  Feels close now, at least...

    Shopping Suggestions - Quiet, 8-12 Slots (one 2.5" cache), $1200 Budget

    in Unraid Compulsive Design

    Posted

    Ok, motherboard is completely removed and stable on static free bag.

     

    Everything disconnected except CPU/Fan combo and ram.

     

    Power goes on, and I'm back to stage 1: the green BMC heartbeat light is blinking again, the red "PWR fail" led is solid right next to it - and I'm not sure if this was the case last night, but LED1 in the opposite corner of the board ("Power LED Indicator Header") is now lit up solid green.

     

    Unless I'm doing something really stupid here, it sounds like there's an issue with the motherboard or the PSU.  Without an extra PSU or extra testing gadgets I'd need to order anyways, is there any way to determine which one is the problem without playing RMA roulette?  I'm leaning towards PSU issues, but these seemingly conflicting motherboard lights have me confused...

    Shopping Suggestions - Quiet, 8-12 Slots (one 2.5" cache), $1200 Budget

    in Unraid Compulsive Design

    Posted

    Pretty sure on the standoffs; motherboard documentation showed them in all of the spots I used them in, though there was one extra standoff included with the board that I didn't use (per instructions; also, no obvious place to use it).

     

    Entirely possible something went wrong there, though.  I'm going to try taking the board out of the box and starting it on the bag it came in, and will post updates.

    Shopping Suggestions - Quiet, 8-12 Slots (one 2.5" cache), $1200 Budget

    in Unraid Compulsive Design

    Posted

    Yep to both plugs - nope to the power supply tester / multimeter.

     

    Weird thing: when I first turned on the PSU, the motherboard's LED 5 (BMC Heartbeat) was blinking green (which according to the instructions meant "BMC normal"), but it was paired with a red LED 6 (power status).  Subsequent attempts to power up, only the red light lit up; BMC heartbeat produces no light anymore.

     

    Only way to try another PSU would be to disassemble one of my existing unraid boxes; honestly, RMA would be less of a pain.

     

    I'm crashing for the night, but will try any other suggestions anyone posts when I'm home from work tomorrow, and will plan on RMA'ing on Tuesday if I'm still out of luck by the time I crash tomorrow.

     

    Thanks, garycase!