December 31, 201312 yr Hey Guys, I have a paritydrive, nine disks and one cachedrive. Its all connected to a Asus P7H55/USB3 motherboard with a simple videocard in it and two Promise SATA controllers. All powered by Corsair VX450. A few years ago I build this and wonder why I could not get more drives visible in unRaid. If I connect another drive, still only ten drives are visible. (eleven with cachedrive) I never found out why. This morning I had an idea: What if the power supply is not big enough for my configuration, would that be possible? Does anyone know if my Corsair VX 450 (230V) power supply is to weak for more disks? Thanx all and have a great party tonight!
December 31, 201312 yr you need to figure out the amps each drive draws and compare to the 12V amps available on the power supply.
December 31, 201312 yr If your system otherwise works fine, and you have additional SATA ports available but can't get it to power up when you add additional drives to those ports, then it's very likely that your power supply simply can't handle the spin-up load for that many disks. Simple enough to confirm ... First, move some current drives to the unused SATA ports to confirm that the ports are in fact okay. If all of the SATA ports are good after you test them, then it's very likely that all you need is a larger power supply.
December 31, 201312 yr Hey Guys, I have a paritydrive, nine disks and one cachedrive. Its all connected to a Asus P7H55/USB3 motherboard with a simple videocard in it and two Promise SATA controllers. All powered by Corsair VX450. A few years ago I build this and wonder why I could not get more drives visible in unRaid. If I connect another drive, still only ten drives are visible. (eleven with cachedrive) I never found out why. This morning I had an idea: What if the power supply is not big enough for my configuration, would that be possible? Does anyone know if my Corsair VX 450 (230V) power supply is to weak for more disks? Thanx all and have a great party tonight! It is marginal. If each drive draws 3 amps on spinup, then even without the CPU, MB, FANS you are drawing 33 Amps at spinup on a power supply rated at MAX for 33 Amps on the 12 Volt rail. If you figure 5more Amps for the MB, additional disk controller cards, fans, etc... you are probably needing a higher capacity single-rail power supply.
December 31, 201312 yr Author Thanx! My other SATA ports work fine. I'm buying a new power supply as fast as possible and let you guys know if that did the trick
January 1, 201412 yr A few years ago I build this and wonder why I could not get more drives visible in unRaid. If I connect another drive, still only ten drives are visible. (eleven with cachedrive) I never found out why. This morning I had an idea: What if the power supply is not big enough for my configuration, would that be possible? I'm sure I have read of similar problems before somewhere on the forum and it has turned out to be a BIOS limitation on some Asus boards... Can't find it right now though. If your system otherwise works fine, and you have additional SATA ports available but can't get it to power up when you add additional drives to those ports, then it's very likely that your power supply simply can't handle the spin-up load for that many disks. True, but what ScubaBart said was that it would not recognise more than a certain number of drives - not that it wouldn't power up. Not powering up would very probably be a power supply problem, but not seeing more than a fixed number of drives seems to me to be more like a software limitation imposed on the hardware. And a Happy New Year to all!
January 4, 201412 yr Author All right guys, So now I bought a new Corsair RM750 and hooked it up to my server. Guess what: Same problem The power supply is not the problem.. So now I searched the forum for some articles about my MoBo (could have done this first yes I know..), and from what I understand is that my P7H55/USB3 does not support more than 11 drives. Now I know this my new goal is to get a new MoBo as well. The problem I now have is that I can't seem to find a MoBo that supports up to 14 drives total with my 2 Promise TX PCI cards for shure and is still for sale in Holland right now. It would really be nice if I could use my current i3 processor and my memory. If not I just have to buy everything new. But what do I buy?? Of course I searched the " Hardware Compatibility" list, but My MoBo is on there too and that only support 11 drives.. Suggestions anyone?
January 4, 201412 yr I doubt that the board has a hard limit of 11 drives. It's far more likely that there's a compatibility issue with the Promise TX PCI cards ... perhaps interrupt conflicts with multiple cards; possibly a conflict with the controller chip on the cards with the onboard chip; etc. I'd try using an 8-port card in one of the PCIe x16 slots before buying a new motherboard -- you'll need a good controller anyway, so it's not a waste to get it now, and it will likely save you from any other upgrade requirements. Pick up a SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 and give it a try.
January 4, 201412 yr ... or one of the M1015's that are sold here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=31016.0
January 4, 201412 yr Author Ok garycase, Look at this guy, sunnyville (near bottom of page), he has the same problem with the same MoBo. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=14158.msg135783#msg135783 I will try one of those M1015's, (or the AOC-SASLP-MV8) if you think that will do it. Do I need any special extra cables with that? It's not that simple to just stick my old SATA cables in that card I think? Thanx!
January 4, 201412 yr That's a good forum find about setting the unRAID USB key to be bootable. Yes. The SAS card uses different cables.
January 4, 201412 yr Author Thanx DaleWilliams! Are these the correct cables?: http://www.allekabels.nl/sata-en-esata-kabel/1763/1083890/sata-naar-sas-kabel.html
January 4, 201412 yr What are the two Promise SATA controllers you are using (model)? How many hard drives are connected to them, and how many hard drives are connected to the motherboard?
January 4, 201412 yr Ok garycase, Look at this guy, sunnyville (near bottom of page), he has the same problem with the same MoBo. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=14158.msg135783#msg135783 I will try one of those M1015's, (or the AOC-SASLP-MV8) if you think that will do it. Do I need any special extra cables with that? It's not that simple to just stick my old SATA cables in that card I think? Thanx! Note that the post after the one you linked to, JoeL suggested a way to resolve the USB flash boot issue ... and there was never any more mention of it => so it's not completely clear whether or not it was resolved, but my guess would be that it was. In much later posts (2013) Sunnyvale added 3 drives to his 11-drive array without issue ... so unless he changed his hardware (never mentioned) it would seem he overcame that limitation. That MAY, in fact, be the same issue you're having ... if so, then this may not be a compatibility issue with the Promise cards after all (although the PCIe x4 cards are a FAR better choice than the old PCI cards anyway). As you've already noted, you have to buy SAS-SATA breakout cables to use the cards I suggested.
January 4, 201412 yr Thanx DaleWilliams! Are these the correct cables?: http://www.allekabels.nl/sata-en-esata-kabel/1763/1083890/sata-naar-sas-kabel.html It looks right. (SFF 8087) Do they have a cable with LOCKING clips on the SATA breakouts? With so many drives, you'll have many cables...locking clips will likely prove convenient!
January 5, 201412 yr That's a good forum find about setting the unRAID USB key to be bootable. Yes. The SAS card uses different cables. FYI: The cable you are showing in your graphic looks to be a SFF-8484 to 4 SATA cable which is what came with my SuperMicro 4 x 1 laptop drive cage(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101190). The M1015 requires a SFF-8087 cable connector which is what ScubaBart's link looks to be.
January 5, 201412 yr That's a good forum find about setting the unRAID USB key to be bootable. Yes. The SAS card uses different cables. FYI: The cable you are showing in your graphic looks to be a SFF-8484 to 4 SATA cable which is what came with my SuperMicro 4 x 1 laptop drive cage(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101190). The M1015 requires a SFF-8087 cable connector which is what ScubaBart's link looks to be. Absolutely right, BobPhoenix. I fixed the graphic.
January 5, 201412 yr Author What are the two Promise SATA controllers you are using (model)? How many hard drives are connected to them, and how many hard drives are connected to the motherboard? @unevent: The two SATA controllers I use are "Promise FastTrak TX4310". On one there are two disks connected and the other one has four disks connected. My MoBo has five disks connected.
January 6, 201412 yr What are the two Promise SATA controllers you are using (model)? How many hard drives are connected to them, and how many hard drives are connected to the motherboard? @unevent: The two SATA controllers I use are "Promise FastTrak TX4310". On one there are two disks connected and the other one has four disks connected. My MoBo has five disks connected. I don't think those Promise cards will support drives larger than 2TB, even if that large. If the drive you are trying to add to the Promise card is larger than that, suggest moving a hard drive from the motherboard SATA (assuming it is smaller) to the Promise and put the new drive on the motherboard. If running 5-i386 or a at least a 5RC of unRAID it is an easy juggle in the GUI which may be automatic. Normally larger-than-supported drives will be seen, but will show a reduced drive capacity in unRAID. The Promise card may not be allowing the OS to see the drive at all because it doesn't understand the geometry (guessing, check the card's BIOS). If your power supply was weak you would get obvious signs of a problem, usually the hard drives powering up and down when the internal rail current limit kicks in and cycle, an instant shutoff, or a long pronounced spin-up of the drives (temporary undervolt). My 2¢. As others have said, that supply was marginal for your power-on load.
January 6, 201412 yr Author @unevent: All my drives are 2TB or bigger, my parity is 4TB and I have several 3TB disks installed. Even a 3TB disk is on one Promise card, and it works. I hope when my Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 arrives tomorrow, all my worries (and the two Promise cards) are gone...
January 7, 201412 yr @unevent: All my drives are 2TB or bigger, my parity is 4TB and I have several 3TB disks installed. Even a 3TB disk is on one Promise card, and it works. I hope when my Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 arrives tomorrow, all my worries (and the two Promise cards) are gone... Interesting as those are PCI cards. Are you getting fully capacity from the drives? Regardless, looks like you are replacing them anyway so not much point in worrying about them.
January 7, 201412 yr @unevent: All my drives are 2TB or bigger, my parity is 4TB and I have several 3TB disks installed. Even a 3TB disk is on one Promise card, and it works. I hope when my Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 arrives tomorrow, all my worries (and the two Promise cards) are gone... Hopefully all your problems will be resolved. One thing that's certain: you'll see a BIG improvement in parity check speeds when you switch to the PCIe x4 card from those Promise PCI cards.
January 8, 201412 yr Author @unevent: Yes, I got full capacity from the drives. @all others: The good news is that the AOC-SASLP-MV8 seems to work. I can assign more disks than before, so now I have a Parity, a cache AND disk 1 > 12!! Off course I removed the Promise cards. The problem is now: When I added the new disks, unRaid started to clear the disks. After that, I could not enter the GUI thru internet explorer on my PC. I assumed this was because of the clearing process which takes a long time. When I got up this morning I still couldn't reach the GUI thru explorer, but: The old disks 1 > 9 and my "Media" share were visible in explorer. Since I was hoping to welcome the disks 10, 11 and 12 but couldn't reach the GUI, I restarted the server. I got an error when booting the AOC-SASLP-MV8. "something went wrong with the raid controller, press any key to exit" or something like that. (When I booted the system the first time with the AOC-SASLP-MV8), this was NOT the case) When pressing a key, unRaid started normally. All disks showed up, including the disk assigned as disk 10, 11 and 12, even with green balls. Stopped, Configuration Valid, it said, and the only thing I had to do was bring the array online with the start button. After that, I saw some disks "Mounting", or "Resizing". Disk 10, 11 and 12 all three showed: "Unformatted". And after that the Tower went unreachable again. Not the GUI and not thru explorer. What could be the problem?
January 8, 201412 yr Not sure why you're having problems "seeing" the array with the Web GUI ... you need to do a bit of experimentation to confirm whether this might be a network cabling issue; bad switch port; etc. But the 3 disks showing as Unformatted is normal -- after they're cleared, they need to be formatted. You just need to check the box that says it's okay to format them; then Start the array and they'll format in a few minutes. Have you tried accessing the array via the IP address? [if you don't know it, log in to your router and look at its client table.]
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.