I have 2 of these and I have noticed some oddities with the drive activity lights.  Depending on what drive is in what slot and what is connected to the sata port on the cage some activity lights don't light up and 1 appears to stay on.  There does not seem to be any pattern ie 1 drive in 1 slot has the activity light on all the time and blinks when accessed move it to a different slot and it doen't come on at all even with activity move it to a different slot again activity light works fine put other drives in the other slots and activity light works. 

 

2 slots for instance when connected to the onboard don't have any activity lights at all working (even tho activity light connected to the mainboard works) but move those ports to different slots and then they work.  Move them to other slots and 1 works and one stays on and blinks with activity.

 

Is this normal, am I on drugs or WTF is up??

Regarding the Norco SS-500 drive activity lights, what you are seeing isn't normal behavior, but it is something that I've seen before. The issue is generally that different hard drives and motherboards handle drive activity indicators in different ways.  However, you mentioned that moving the same drive to different drive bays will produce different results. This could indicate that something is defective in your hardware, either a problem with the drive cages themselves (more likely) or the hard drives (less likely). While you should be able to report the issue to Norco or your vendor and get the hardware replaced, I would suggest that unless it really bothers you it may not be worth your time and effort (and possible expense, if you have to cover shipping of the defective items).  The activity lights are completely optional, I sometimes disable all hard drive activity lights in a server when I want to keep ambient light down (such as in a home theater environment).

 

It could also be the case that nothing whatsoever is wrong with your hardware and that it is just the motherboard and SATA cards sending out different signals to the drive activity lights.  Have you noticed any correlation between this aberrant behavior and which motherboard/SATA controller card port the drive bay is connected to?

 

One thing you might try is to disconnect the case's HDD LED from the motherboard headers - this LED typically only works well for a single drive system, and sometimes unRAID servers with multiple hard drives will confuse this LED system and cause erratic behavior.  You could also mess with the jumpers on the drive cages located behind the plastic fan cover.  I haven't done that myself, so I can't offer any advice in that area.

 

You also sent me this as a PM:

 

I also replaced the fan in the norco ss-500's with your recommended quiet fan cl-swif2-801 and my temps are pretty high compared to your tests.

 

Status Disk Mounted Device Model/Serial Temp Reads Writes Errors Size Used %Used Free

OK parity  /dev/sdc Hitachi_HDS5C3030ALA630_MJ1321YNG0E2EA 41°C 78051 71414     

OK /dev/md1 /mnt/disk1 /dev/sde 00MMMB0_WD-WCAWZ1155791 40°C 14542 1604  3.00T 2.27T 76% 727.60G

OK /dev/md2 /mnt/disk2 /dev/sdb 9YN166_W1F004TP 29°C 436 12  3.00T 2.25T 75% 751.97G

OK /dev/md3 /mnt/disk3 /dev/sdd Hitachi_HDS5C3030ALA630_MJ1323YNG1GM6C 40°C 93947 69527  3.00T 2.26T 76% 738.11G

OK /dev/md4 /mnt/disk4 /dev/sda Hitachi_HDS5C3030ALA630_MJ1323YNG1BZGC 36°C 465 10  3.00T 2.26T 76% 743.60G

OK /dev/md5 /mnt/disk5 /dev/sdf Hitachi_HDS5C3030ALA630_MJ1313YNG2GKNC 37°C 302 10  3.00T 2.24T 75% 760.00G

 

Disk 1 has my apps installed so it's always running

Disk 2 is in the second norco on it's own with no other drives atm

Disk 3 was in the middle of having a 45gb file written to it

and all other disks are still spinnig due to array being on for about 30 mins when I took these.

 

So unless I am doing something wrong I am going to need to get a fan with more CFM and my ambient temps are 22°C when doing these tests.  The temp tests you did were they with stock fan or a replacement.  The replacement went well and I managed not to break anything and I can feel the fan flow and there is quite a bit of difference in the temp of the air coming out of each unit ie the one with 5 disks is warmer than the one with 1 disk.  Tip I have is press the centre of the fan cage from the back and that pushes the fan out enough to grab the edges and lift it up without having to lever it and bring it out uneven. 

 

So do you have any sugestions as to what I may have wrong or am I just going to need a fan that moves more air??

 

Those temperatures are all in the acceptable range, especially given your slightly higher than normal ambient temperature of 22 C (standard room temp is 20 C).  Typically an unRAID server will have most of its drives spun down most of the time.  You mention an apps drive that is always spun up, so you can expect that one to hover around 38 - 42 C at all times.  All your other drives should be spun down most of the time, and only during parity checks or heavy writing events will they be spun up for long periods of time.  I believe that the temperatures you are currently seeing are perfectly acceptable and that no fan replacement is needed.

Thank you very much for your advise and the reply.  It doesn't bother me other than it bothers me if you know what I mean.  It's going to be in my theatre room anyways the less blinking the better.  My drive temps were much better im my N36L that I migrated from so just used to seeing lower temps I guess.  My temps in summer tho will be much worse as ambient can get up to 35 given everything is in an Antec 1200 case and it is pretty silent atm I might play around with some other fans to see what I can get them down to. 

Thanks I have been having a problem with LED in bay 1 of my SS-500 and now I got some ideas from this thread.  I have the case HDD LED plugged in.. i'll try removign that.  I'll look into the jumpers on the back of the ss-500 as well.  thanks again.