So I am setting up a new unRAID server and decided to use the Biostar H55A+ but I am having some problems.

 

When the system is booted it will initialize the 2x MV8 cards, and get into the BIOS setup. From there I make the USBdrive the boot 1st drive and the boot priority (note I am unable to disable all the other drives, like I normally would).

 

I also made sure the USB emulates a hard drive.

 

So I f10 to save the config and the machine does a reboot. Upon reboot the server hangs after the first MV8 card spins up all the drives and won't pass the 'initializing raid component' part.

 

If I turn it off and back on, no problem is loads both MV8 cards, but none of the BIOS settings are saved and therefore it won't boot from the USB drive!!

 

I am going to update the BIOS now... any thoughts?

BIOS updated.

 

The next boot without the MV8s I was able to boot unraid.

 

I then powered down, installed mv8 cards and booted and it went to unraid.

 

I powered down, and now I can't get it to boot unraid. There is something going on in the BIOS where I can't disable all the other drives. I cant even change the devices or their order. I am able to hit the + key to get my USB drive to be 1st drive and priority drive, but it seems something with the cards is over taking the BIOS??

Yeah.. something in the BIOS settings is just not right. Every time I powerdown after changing the boot disk and priority and go back into BIOS it is never the USB drive. Sheesh!

Go into the Supermicro BIOS for each controller and disable INT13 - this means than none of the HDs attached to the controller will be bootable and they no longer will screw your boot-up order.

Go into the Supermicro BIOS for each controller and disable INT13 - this means than none of the HDs attached to the controller will be bootable and they no longer will screw your boot-up order.

 

Oh you don't say?!?!?! Best way to get into the BIOS of the cards? Plug them into a win7 machine?

I forgot but it clearly states at boot-up time - Ctrl-A or Ctrl-M

 

And you can do it one at a time.

 

Best way to get into the BIOS of the cards? Plug them into a win7 machine?

 

What has access to the card's BIOS, or any BIOS for that matter, got to do with Win7?

 

As far as I can determine, you need to hit ctrl-m during the machine startup in order to get to the MV8 BIOS - this is before any O/S gets a look in.

Thank you for the videos, they were very helpful.  I've got one of those FlipVideo cameras too, I love it.  Alright, here's the things that occur to me:

 

1) Your SASLP cards have a 'RAID' function, so they must be running the newer version of the firmware (BIOS version ending in .21).  The older version (ending in .15) has no RAID functions, and drives attached to them will be registered as SCSI drives instead of RAID drives in both the motherboard's BIOS and the unRAID syslog.  I recommend you downgrade the flash on your SASLP cards to .15.  You should be able to do this from the server.  Instructions on how to to it can be found here.  Once you downgrade the firmware your first task should then be to disable INT13 on both SASLP cards (you can do both at once).  Hold ctrl-m during the brief screen in which the SASLP card shows all the drive's serial numbers.

 

2) As the above instructions also say, your motherboard's SATA ports should also be set to AHCI mode.

 

3) I also noticed that your motherboard had a PEG setting (on the southbridge page, I believe).  Try disabling that or setting it to something else.  PEG basically means that the PCIe slots can only be used for video cards.  I bet that after doing 1 and 2 this won't really matter much, but it is still something to try.

 

4) Definitely replace that CPU cooler.  If it is the stock one, you should be able to get a free replacement.  However, are you sure there isn't just a loose cable that is hitting up against one of the fans?  That's what it sounds like to me.  And the sound seems to have disappeared in the third video.

 

5) By the way, 'reboot' is a valid system console command as well (instead of powerdown and then pressing the power button again).

 

Please let me know if this solves your problem...I'm pretty confident that it will.  This has inspired me to create a stickied thread about SATA controller cards and their settings, so I'm off to do that.

Well I ended up just disabling the INT13 on both the MV8's and everything booted up! Combined two unRAID servers into 1 and I am now building Parity! I will begin testing this board more and more and get it to level 2.

Great, I'm glad to hear that.  I realized that I'm using two SASLP cards with the .21 firmware on a client builds, and all I had to do was disable INT13 to get everything to work properly.  I still don't see the RAID options that you do, though, so that's odd.

I forgot to say Thank you to everyone!!! So thank you