Transplanted my server into a new case, stability problems now

[VFRLuke]

tower-diagnostics-20211118-0611.zip

 

Hello,

 

I had all of my hardware in an old cooler master case and I couldn't find any of the drive bays for it, so I decided to treat myself to a Fractal Define 7 that newegg had on sale.

 

Long story short.  I have 9 drives installed and after the install it only wants to boot up about half the time and my cpu load seems to be much higher than what it was before.

 

This thing was rock solid before, and the only thing that could be different is maybe some sata cables and maybe the way that I utilized the power supply connections.

 

I did add another drive in there to try and preclear it to see what kind of shape it was in, but I tried to unplug the connections from that particular drive and it still seems to only want to boot up about half the time.

 

I only use this for storage, no docker containers.  It's a retired gaming machine with a P8P67 motherboard, i5-2500k cpu.  The motherboard has 8 sata ports on it and I have another little 2 port sata controller on it for the 9th drive (that's the one that I unplugged).  I also have no GPU in this machine to even see what is happening during the boot.  I can find something to install, but I wanted to post a thread with the diagnostics to see if anyone had any ideas of what I might check.

 

I was thinking of just replacing a few of the SATA cables and checking to see if it's better, but I'm certainly up for suggestions.  The sata cable theory might make sense because I disturbed all of them and may have even put in a couple of different ones to try and get the lengths closer to what I needed in the new case.  The unassigned WD40EZRX is the disk that I tried unplugging.  I see the error rate is really high on that disk as well and I suspected issues from that particular drive in the past.

 

Thanks in advance,

Luke

[trurl]

2 hours ago, VFRLuke said:

The sata cable theory might make sense because I disturbed all of them and may have even put in a couple of different ones to try and get the lengths closer to what I needed in the new case.

Be sure you don't try to make the cables so short that they pull on the connector.

[VFRLuke]

I replaced 4 cables and eliminated drive 9 as I was just using it as a second spot for preclearing.  so far so good.  I powered it up and down about 5 times and it booted every time.

 

I might run a parity check and set it to not write corrections just to stress test it a bit.

[VFRLuke]

I did not replace the power supply.  the one I have is a quality unit with a 12v rail capable of 49A.  so if I have 9 drives (8 now) and no GPU that gives me a ton of headroom.

 

I thought about replacing it just to have a modular power supply and neaten up the wiring.

[Frank1940]

5 hours ago, VFRLuke said:

have another little 2 port sata controller on it for the 9th drive (that's the one that I unplugged).

 I would be a bit suspicious of this card.  So many of these are made in China and use components of dubious quality.  I believe there are just a couple of the chip sets (for the two port cards) that are fully compatible with Unraid. 

 

 

[VFRLuke]

On 11/18/2021 at 10:53 PM, Frank1940 said:

 I would be a bit suspicious of this card.  So many of these are made in China and use components of dubious quality.  I believe there are just a couple of the chip sets (for the two port cards) that are fully compatible with Unraid. 

 

 

I pulled it out.  I'll keep it at 8 ports for now.  If I want to ever add another I'll get one of the LSI controllers I suppose.