I bought an MD-1500/LL complete system because I did not want to worry about what worked with what and so forth.  Everything has been going good up to now.

 

My current system has 5 drives and 1 parity drive.  I bought another drive to expand and the system does not see it at all.  Previous expansions have gone great.  At first I though I had bought a bad drive but it works fine on other systems so the drive is good.

 

Messing around with the slots I discovered that unRAID will see it fine if I put it in one of the first 6 slots that I'm already using.  But then the existing drive I moved is no longer seen.  So I opened it up and had a look hoping something would be loose but it looks fine.  I can see the MD-1500/LL has the first 6 drives go to the motherboard and then two sets of 4 go to 2 other cards in PCI slots.  With this in mind I tried slots that fed into the either PCI card but its not seen on either one.  (Can you skip open slots like that?)

 

Further looking shows that the very last slot also goes to the motherboard in a different spot by itself.  Guess what.  If I put the drive in that slot then unRAID does see it.  What is this slot?    Not sure If I should use it so I have not tried to start the array.

 

With it in this state here is a snapshot so show what I mean.

 

Hmmm, did the snapshot work.  If not I'll edit.

 

I assume all slots got tested before it shipped to me but I've never tried any slots other the first 6 as I have slowly expanded.  Looking back at my records they show I ordered it at the end of June 2007.  Any Ideas how I can confirm its the PCI cards?  Should I go ahead and try to use that last slot?  Even if I do use the last slot I still need to fix this for future expansion.  I still have 27% free overall so I don't need to put the new drive into the setup just yet.

 

Should I hook a monitor up?  I have no idea what I should look for as I've never used one with it before.

 

Others have reported that the PCI cards became un-seated during shipping.

Stop the array, Power down, then re-seat the two PCI cards used for the other disk drives before trying anything else.  It might be as simple as that.

 

Joe L.

 

Good idea.  I should have tried that.  It did not work however.

 

And now I messed with the Devices Tab and Disk6 (the slot I need to use for this next disk) is "unassigned".  Opps, what did I just do?  Tried a few things but its not back.

I do a automatic monthly copy of the Config dir from the usb flash boot drive.  I have  a copy from a couple weeks ago.  Could I copy those files back and reboot to fix this part that I just now screwed up?

 

I hooked up a monitor before I reseated the cards.  I noticed it says "Can't detect TPM device" right at the start of the boot process.  But that does not prevent all my other stuff from working.  No idea if this is related but I thought I'd mention it.

 

I hit the Restore button hoping it would fix the "unassigned" thing I just messed with.  No go, Its currently doing a parity sync and I'm going to bed.  No data lost.  All is good that way.

 

The "Restore" button stores a new initial configuration based on the currently assigned and working disks.  It then re-calculates parity based on the currently assigned (and working) disks.  In other words, if you had a failed disk, and parity was letting you get to your old data, pressing "Restore" would erase ALL knowledge of the failed disk, and erase all data being reconstructed from parity, and start the process of calculating new parity on the remaining functional disks still assigned.    

 

The "Restore" button does not "restore" anything.  (in my personal opinion, it is very poorly named)  Instead, it resets the unRAID server as if you were first starting it.  It uses as the new configuration the currently assigned (and working) disks, and then throws away any prior parity data and re-computes parity based on the currently assigned (and working) disks.

 

If you had a failed disk in your array, or have replaced a disk with a new one and press "Restore" everything about that old/failed disk and all data it contained will be gone, erased, forgotten, lost.  

(The button does not perform a data restore of a failed drive, but instead performs an initial configuration reset WITHOUT the failed drive)

 

In your case, if the disk you were trying to add had no data, no problem.

 

To help you more, we need to see a copy of your syslog.

 

Instructions to copy it to the flash drive are in the wiki.  

 

Joe L.

Think of "restore" as "re-store" (as in store again).  Do not take pressing the button lightly - as Joe L. explains, pressing it can cause you to go from an easily recoverable scenario to a non-recoverable scenario.

Think of "restore" as "re-store" (as in store again).  Do not take pressing the button lightly - as Joe L. explains, pressing it can cause you to go from an easily recoverable scenario to a non-recoverable scenario.

Basically, about the only time it should be used is when permanently deleting a disk from the array, and you want to re-compute parity now that it is gone.

 

Joe L.

 

  I just read the thread where you guys argue about what should be on that button.  No harm in my case.

 

Should I get this "unassigned" thing fixed before getting the syslog.  Would copying the config dir back and rebooting do that? 

 

 

I checked the Wiki (for the syslog stuf, looks simple) and found the following lines.

 

Okay, the cable was lose, or I think the failure was fluke - how can I get unRAID to reuse this same disk that it thought had failed?

 

You can re-enable the hard drive and try to reconstruct it as follows:

 

    * Stop the array, go to the Devices page and unassign the disk.

    * Reboot

    * Stop the array, go to the Devices page and re-assign the disk

    * Go to Main - system should detect a "new" drive for the one disabled, click Start to start parity-reconstruct of the disk.

 

 

Does this mean my "Unassigned" issue does not mater.  Once we figure out why none of the slots feeding the PCI cards are working I'll be able to re-assign it as per the wiki.  If so, then I'll get the syslog and post it after I get home after work today.

 

I did boot with the drive both in and out of that slot without being able to do what the wiki says so I'm guessing the system has to detect that something is actually plugged in before it can be re-assigned.

 

Last question.  The new drive is not currently plugged in anywhere.  Since I don't know what your looking for in the syslog do you guys want the new drive plugged in to any particular slot before I get the syslog.  (the unassigned one or on one of the others or both?)

 

 

Calvin-

The problem you describe is due to one or both of the Promise PCI controller cards getting unseated during shipment.  The Lian-Li PC-A16B chassis used in the MD-1500/LL version is all-aluminum and will flex as a result of being thrown around during shipping.  We have recently fixed this problem but certainly this has happened to your system.

 

What you need to do is remove the left-side cover.  You will see the PCI controller cards underneath a fan housing.  In order to really get at the controller cards, you may need to loosen the fan housing by removing the 4 thumb screws holding it in place.  You probably do not need to remove the controller cards - just ensure they are pressed into the motherboard, especially the side toward the disk drives.

 

You can verify the cards are seated by watching the boot process.  After the initial POST screen, you should see the Promise BIOS load (actually it will report that it's not loaded if no drives are detected).  If you see this go by, then the controller cards are functional.

 

We apologize for this problem, but as mentioned above, it has been fixed - live and learn I guess...

 

PS the 'Can't detect TPM device' bios message just means there's no "Trusted Platform Module" detected.

 

I took off the Fan you describe yesterday to reseat the cards without any luck.  Yet you seem so certain I thought I'd have another shot at it.  The key words in your post are

 

especially the side toward the disk drives.

 

You can verify the cards are seated by watching the boot process.  After the initial POST screen, you should see the Promise BIOS load (actually it will report that it's not loaded if no drives are detected).  If you see this go by, then the controller cards are functional.

 

I know I never saw the Promise Bios load.

 

With this in mind and nothing to lose I pushed on it much harder then what I would consider normal to put a card in.  It suddenly snapped into place.  It looked fine before but this was definitely further in.  Both cards had to be pushed on fairly hard to get them to properly go in.  And suddenly I do see the Promise Bios Load.

 

Now keep in mind that I can't put the screws for the Promise Cards back in or the cards will pop back out of the slots.  I guess you were not kidding when you said the system can get flexed during shipping.  I had a computer several years ago that had this same problem with a sound card.  It was not good as it kept coming out.  But that one never did feel solid.  Both these card do feel solid and not going anywhere so I guess this is ok.  Hopefully this is not a problem down the road.  At least I know about it now.

 

Now that the system sees the cards and the new drive, the "Unassigned" thing I did is not an issue.  I was able to put it back to normal and the system can see the new drive regardless of what slot I put it in.  The new drive has been cleared and formated.  The system has expanded and looks good.

 

 

Seems that Joe L actually had the solution yesterday and I did try it, but did just not push hard enough.  So Thanks to Joe L for the solution and Thanks to Limetech for the extra hint that showed they still were not properly seated.

 

 

Now keep in mind that I can't put the screws for the Promise Cards back in or the cards will pop back out of the slots.  I guess you were not kidding when you said the system can get flexed during shipping.

 

 

This happened to my system too. I didn't re-apply the screws because they would fetch the cards out of their place. As long as you keep the system in place and don't move it around this will work. Actually it worked for me since three months now.

 

Regards

Harald