March 31, 201313 yr Hi, guys! My server has been running smooth for months - I rarely log into it. Last Friday, I was off from work and I decided that I should check on the server - I have been considering changing the motherboard to a Hudson D4 class motherboard with a Fusion quad core so I can try integrating my server with Universal Media Server for an all in one solution. I also wanted to move it (physically) to another place. I quickly realized that I couldn't bring any pages up other than the MAIN webpage. So, I tried for an orderly shutdown. Wouldn't work. Finally, I just went downstairs and did a power cycle. That was a mistake. After that, my server was down - it would not reboot. I would get as far as the point that the Linux core starts up and the screen would freeze. Dumbfounded, I put another USB drive I use for system rescue in. It also would not boot. Most odd - I put it in another computer and rebooted it - I got my recovery menu. So, I prepared another USB drive with the latest version of UNRAID. It also would not boot - it failed in the same place every time. It was looking grim - like I had a partial Motherboard failure for all USB devices. I spent a few hours, perplexed and muttering to myself about the possibilities that I had lost the entire array. But how? No electrical storms, the system had not missed a beat in more than 4 months and without having a battery backup. At this point I suspected a motherboard failure (I am using a Zotac mini itx board) - it would have been a small loss (approximately 7 inches by 7 inches) Then I stuck the old USB drive that had my Unraid OS and settings on it in another computer - I got the "software installing" and the "device is ready to use" messages and then nothing - Windows assigned a drive letter to the USB and I could right click it for the properties. It showed 0 bytes available, 0 bytes in files...everything was 0 but the drive showed as filled...I wasn't getting anything off that device anymore. So, since I was starting from scratch, I went and got a new 8GB SanDisk Cruiser. I fast formatted it, renamed it to "UNRAID" and used 7zip to extract the files onto the new USB Drive. I then ran the utility to make the drive bootable and put it in the server. I fingered the power button and my server started...until it got to the USB Boot process and it stuck again. What the heck is going on here? After a few hours of experimentation - I figured out a few things... 1. My ZOTAC motherboards' BIOS will REMOVE USB devices from the boot chain if they are not present during boot time... 2. Additionally, once you install the USB device, LEAVE IT IN THERE. (It appeared to me that my USB was becoming intermittent) 3. I needed to unzip the new UNRAID software into a temporary directory and THEN move the unzipped files to the USB drive. (Not unzip the files directly to the USB device - they would not work that way!) So, after I got the USB drive configured correctly and UNRAID installed on it, I was able to insert my new USB drive, start the server and get into the BIOS where I could add the USB Device to the boot list and move it to the top of the boot sequence. My server started right up. I spent a few minutes assigning my parity drive and my data drive (I would have had some real issues but I knew what was what!) - then it was a waiting game for a parity check. This morning I initiated the migration tool and a few minutes later, my server was recovered and running the latest UNRAID. I then added the latest version of SimpleFeatures and WOW! I'm very happy. Thanks to the whole team - UNRAID just gets better and better.
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