Motherboard Replacement

[JP]

I've recently had some issues with my unRAID Server freezing intermittently.  I have another open topic surrounding it and even with a lot of help it has been difficult to locate exactly where the issue might be.  In the interest of everyone's time I've elected to simply purchase a new motherboard/cpu/ram bundle since my gut tells me the issue resides with the SATA controllers on the motherboard of the current motherboard I have.

 

What I've purchased is very similar to what I have now.  The motherboards and RAM are identical.  The new CPU is faster than what I have now.  While I'm waiting on the hardware to arrive I wanted to ask if my own understanding of how I should swap out this hardware is accurate. 

 

1. Create documentation around what the current setup has in the BIOS.  This will need to mirrored in the new setup.

2. Swap out old Motherboard/CPU/RAM for new.

3. Ensure the BIOS information from the old setup mirrors the new.

4. Nothing new needs to be done to the USB unRAID Flash Drive.  It should work in the new setup in the same way it did the old.

5. Upon first boot ensure that the parity hard drive is reflected as the same parity hard drive in the new system.  This is important.  The order of the data drives is not a concern.  They do not need to be in the same order as they were in the old system.  Simply assign all of them.

6. Start the array and do a parity check.

 

Does this sound accurate?

 

[trurl]

1. Create documentation around what the current setup has in the BIOS.  This will need to mirrored in the new setup.

2. Swap out old Motherboard/CPU/RAM for new.

3. Ensure the BIOS information from the old setup mirrors the new.

4. Nothing new needs to be done to the USB unRAID Flash Drive.  It should work in the new setup in the same way it did the old.

5. Upon first boot ensure that the parity hard drive is reflected as the same parity hard drive in the new system.  This is important.  The order of the data drives is not a concern.  They do not need to be in the same order as they were in the old system.  Simply assign all of them.

6. Start the array and do a parity check.

 

Does this sound accurate?

1.-4. OK

5. Since nothing has been done to the flash drive, unRAID will already know your array configuration so you won't have to assign anything. All disks will be recognized by their serial numbers and unRAID will put them in the correct slots. The array configuration is stored in config/super.dat and if you don't lose that file everything should just start up. If for some reason it doesn't, you probably have some hardware issue, possibly just a loose connection.

 

6. Not strictly necessary, but it will give the new hardware a test.

 

[JP]

Thanks trurl. 

 

Would it make any sense to replace the usb drive and power supply as well?  I struggle with either being the issue around intermittent freezes because the usb drive should simply load instructions in to memory after boot and not be accessed again...correct?  Basically, it either works or it doesn't.

 

Also, I'm tempted to replace the power supply as well, but I don't see how that could be the issue since the freezes are happening after the drives are up and spinning.  If the freeze occurred when it was attempting to spin up a drive then I could certainly see where the power supply needs to be replaced, but that isn't the case here.

[trurl]

Don't remember what your issues were or what has been tried. Do you have a link?

[JP]

Don't remember what your issues were or what has been tried. Do you have a link?

 

Sure.  It is:

 

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=40470.0

 

Basically, after 5 years of no issues the server just started freezing up when attempting to write to the Data Disks.  The issue can be re-created by writing to an individual disk or the array.  It doesn't always happen, but eventually will, and the log files reflect no issues.  All the drives have passed reiserfsck.  The issue persists with or without safe mode. 

 

I'm leaning toward the issue possibly being the SATA controllers on the motherboard and is why I'm swapping it our for an identical one. 

[trurl]

Thanks trurl. 

 

Would it make any sense to replace the usb drive and power supply as well?  I struggle with either being the issue around intermittent freezes because the usb drive should simply load instructions in to memory after boot and not be accessed again...correct?  Basically, it either works or it doesn't.

 

Also, I'm tempted to replace the power supply as well, but I don't see how that could be the issue since the freezes are happening after the drives are up and spinning.  If the freeze occurred when it was attempting to spin up a drive then I could certainly see where the power supply needs to be replaced, but that isn't the case here.

I think the flash drive is unlikely to be the problem for the reasons you state. Also, a new flash will require a new key, so I would leave that alone for now.

 

Don't know how much money you want to spend or how much time you want to spend on isolating the problem. If you also replaced the power supply then everything worked, I guess you could try again with the old power supply to see if that caused the problem. Might be useful to have an extra power supply anyway.

[JP]

Don't know how much money you want to spend or how much time you want to spend on isolating the problem. If you also replaced the power supply then everything worked, I guess you could try again with the old power supply to see if that caused the problem. Might be useful to have an extra power supply anyway.

 

Thanks for that.  It really helps guide me.  I'll leave the flash as-is.  I think I'll try the new setup with the current power supply and see what the result is.  If I still get freezes the power supply is the first thing I'll swap out and see if that makes a difference.  Thanks again. 

[10meghalfduplex]

Hi, Did you ever figure this out?  I have similar symptoms.

[JP]

Hi, Did you ever figure this out?  I have similar symptoms.

 

Not exactly.  I purchased a used mobo/cpu/ram combo that was almost identical to the same mobo/cpu/ram I had that was freezing.  However, I started experiencing issues with it so after probably too much troubleshooting I returned it.

 

I then went and found a very cheap mobo/cpu/ram combo they had on sale at Fry's.  This was a pretty big departure from what I had, but I just needed to move past the issue I was having.  Ultimately, just about everything got replaced except the parity/data drives themselves and the case. 

 

The new setup was a success.  The freezing didn't happen and I was pretty shocked how well a tiny AMD processor could handle PLEX.  It handles multiple transcoding streams fine, which I really wasn't expecting.