I have a strange problem with my headless Unraid server that just happened without warning. I just used the server on 8/14/23, no issue and then powered it down via the webGUI like normal and left it. I went to turn on the server like normal today and nothing ever came up through the IP address GUI. When nothing came up, I hard powered down and then plugged in a HDMI cable to check, no image, then a DVI cable to check, no image. Then I hard powered down again and checked to see if the USB drive had died (checking via windows) and the USB drive seems to work fine...Also, I tried to boot without the drive so that I can see BIOS but nothing came upI can also hear the HDDs powering up in it's typical sequence and see and hear the CPU fan running.

 

Hardware:

CPU: AMD FX-6300

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3

RAM: 8GB Ballistix Tactical Series DDR3 1600 (BLT4G3D1608ET3LX0)

HDDs: 2 x Seagate Exos X14 14TB

          1 x Toshiba 4TB N300

          1 x Seagate 4TB Ironwolf

 

Some Theories:

1.  I think the motherboards I/O or chipset might have died, I see no Ethernet lights on power up like how I used to and it seems the DVI and USB ports don't work as per the above. So power is being provided to the board but isn't actually processing anything (leading theory)
2. The USB drive is corrupt somehow even though I haven't done anything but boot normally and read from my HDDs, I haven't written to them in a month and I haven't updated Unraid since mid June. Also, as I said above the USB drive works perfectly fine in Windows!
3. All/Some of the HDDs have died?

 

Some Solutions:

1. Take out the pieces and try to install windows on them to confirm motherboard death
   1. I can't see the logic in this because if it didn't boot to bios with no USB what hope do I have to get windows installed
2. Purchase a new system
   1. I like this idea most because these parts are ancient and AFAIK Unraid is drag and drop for hardware upgrades provided the HDD and USB don't change although I would prefer to not spend more money haha
3. Something else I can't think of?

 

I don't mind doing the legwork to get things reconfigured but I'd be devastated if I just lost all my data without warning (no SMART warnings, no clicking, just instant death haha)

 

Also, did I mess things up by doing a few hard/improper shutdowns?

 

Let me know and thank you in advance for your help!

If the board doesn't post you can't install a different OS, try resetting CMOS and remove all RAM, then see if board beeps on power up, if yes re-install one stick of RAM and try again.

Didn't have a motherboard speaker for this motherboard, so I just opted to replace the CMOS battery (which turns out that the old one was sitting at ~2.10V) and that was the issue! 

 

I've never seen a dead/dying CMOS battery take out the I/O on a motherboard before but perhaps for this motherboard it doesn't allow a bypass for the PSU power to power the BIOS in place of the CMOS. Either way I'm back and my data is all good! 🙂

 

Thank you so much for the help!