Hoping someone here can give me another suggestion.

 

Been running an Unraid box without any problems for several months, a few weeks ago I was copying over some files and the server quit responding, had to power it down and reboot. After rebooting the machine would not start backup. After bios loads where the memtest/unraid bootloader would normally come up, I would just bet a blinking cursor.

 

After lots of trial and error I came to the conclusion that I would get this every time I tried to boot with an IDE drive connected. Pull all drives off (only have IDE, no sata drives) unraid would boot normally. So, I ordered a new mobo last week (same model I had previously ASUS P5LD2), new motherboard is reproducing the same exact thing.

 

Any ideas why this wouldn't boot with IDE drives connected?

 

Doesn't seem to be related to one drive or one IDE channel, I have tried all sorts of combinations and it does it with all of them.

Any Ideas you could offer would be great!

You seem fixed on "IDE" as the problem, but since you have no SATA drives, it may be an issue of any drives, not just IDE.

 

Have you gone into the BIOS to make sure that the boot order and boot device info is all correct?  Strange things have happened where BIOS settings get reset without you doing it.

 

It sounds like your system is trying to boot off of the hard drive first, which when it doesn't exist, all is fine, but when it is there, it hangs because there is no OS on the drive.  However, I would expect some sort of message when this occurs.

 

It could also be a PSU problem where the drives are enough to push it to cause a problem.

 

Regardless, please post your syslog.

 

 

Bill

What are your BIOS settings?

 

One thing I noticed is that making the first boot device "USB whatever" didn't actually matter. The only thing that fixed it was to look in hte HardDisk Boot Order and move the flash drive to the top. It should show up as "USB HDDx..." Move it to the top and you should be okay.

 

Any time I change/add a disk, I have to do this again as it repopulates the Hard Disk Boot Order to compensate for the new drive. Usually, it sticks it at the bottom. If you find that the USB doesn't show up, power down and turn the power off at the power supply. Wait about 10 seconds, and power everything back up. When you go into BIOS, you should see it again.