Mobo is 4 years old. Should I use it with unraid or scrap it and get a new one?

[gundam83]

I have an older gigabyte 965-ds3 that I'm currently using to run my unraid server, and I'm a bit worried that it will crap out in the near future. I usually dump my old components every few years, but had decided to reuse this board for unraid. I've been trying to find out what would happen if a mobo dies, but came up with no real answers. Does it take all the data on the connected drives with it? Or can I just swap it out with a different mobo and continue rolling along?

[BRiT]

Before considering going forward with that motherboard, first check and double check the BIOS to see if it has any sort of "save BIOS to hard disk" feature (known as HPA: Host Protected Area) and make sure it is DISABLED by DEFAULT. If it has such a feature and it's not disabled by default, if you do use it, you're setting yourself up for a small world of hurt in the future with your drives.

 

As for what happens when it dies, it all depends on how it dies.

 

As for recovery from it, you merely replace the mb and as long as it didn't kill the drives or other hardware you should be set without any issues.

[vca]

I have an older gigabyte 965-ds3 that I'm currently using to run my unraid server, and I'm a bit worried that it will crap out in the near future. I usually dump my old components every few years, but had decided to reuse this board for unraid. I've been trying to find out what would happen if a mobo dies, but came up with no real answers. Does it take all the data on the connected drives with it? Or can I just swap it out with a different mobo and continue rolling along?

 

I did a motherboard swap a few months ago and it was painless, I even went from Intel processor to AMD processor at the same time.  Just do a parity check to make sure all is good, then do a clean shutdown, pull all the guts out, stuff all the new stuff in, and make sure you've reconnected all of the power connectors (there are so many now!), reconnect your flash drive and boot up. 

 

The hardest part will probably be getting the new BIOS set to boot off the flash drive.

 

Regards,

 

Stephen

 

[nia]

I had an Intel board die catastrophically from a leaking Thermaltake water cooling installation (crap hoses went brittle in little over a year  ) .

 

I replaced with a used AMD board, and was up and running with absolutely no issue. 

 

Most important thing is to keep a physical print of our disk configuration, as you will need it for the new installation.

[gundam83]

I had an Intel board die catastrophically from a leaking Thermaltake water cooling installation (crap hoses went brittle in little over a year  ) .

 

I replaced with a used AMD board, and was up and running with absolutely no issue. 

 

Most important thing is to keep a physical print of our disk configuration, as you will need it for the new installation.

 

Physical print as in which drives are assigned to what port and what function?

[DoeBoye]

I have an older gigabyte 965-ds3 that I'm currently using to run my unraid server, and I'm a bit worried that it will crap out in the near future. I usually dump my old components every few years, but had decided to reuse this board for unraid. I've been trying to find out what would happen if a mobo dies, but came up with no real answers. Does it take all the data on the connected drives with it? Or can I just swap it out with a different mobo and continue rolling along?

 

Personally, I'm from the "If ain't broke" camp. If you are currently using it in your UnRaid server, and you are experiencing no issues or weirdness, why change it? . The only time I would veer from that path is if the original component was from a less then reliable manufacturer, or if it is known to have a high failure rate...

 

As for the second part, as the rest have attested to, swapping in a new motherboard is fairly painless

[nia]

Physical print as in which drives are assigned to what port and what function?

Yep! Like a print of http://tower:8080/ or http://tower:8080/unraid_main

 

Then You will be able to correctly assign drives to correct slots in case of your existing MoBo fails.

 

I agree with the poster above. Wait until you get a real reason to change/upgrade: It breaks, you need more ports, you need more horespower to run add-ons, ...