Hi! I am new to this form, and have been using the unRAID for about couple of weeks. Two weeks ago I set up my box with the budget minded configuration on this form. I assembled everything myself and the machine booted fine, and everything. I use the recommended SanDisk USB Drive... Everything was going fine till today....

 

Today morning before I left for work, I shutdown my unRAID server, because a maitainance guy was comming to my apartment to change the AC filter, therefore I thought I should shut the unRAID server down, in case he switches the fuse off.

 

After comming home this evening I turned on my unRAID server and was hoping everything to work normally, but I would not see the unRAID server in my network, nor could I ping it. So, I hooked up the monitor and keybord to the unRAID server. After fiddeling  for while I think I know what is causing the problem. My motherboard is not recognizing the SanDisk Micro USB as a bootable device....!!! But it used to work fine till this morning, needless to say I am a little frustrated, and dissappointed, and I really don't know what to do next.... Somebody Please help me out......

 

Thanks,

Sagun

It's possible that the boot drive got shuffled in bios.  It's happened to me a few times.  Easily fixed.

 

On my Asus mobo sometimes when I stick in another usb flash drive or even sometimes adding or removing hard drive from the server causes the bios to change it's primary boot drive selection to one of my data drives.  I restart the machine and go into the bios settings on the Boot page and move my unRAID flash drive back to the top of the list.  Reboot and it's back to normal.

Double check your BIOS setting?

 

Hi queeg -

 

I already tried changing the BIOS setting. I removed all other hard drives from the bootable disk option and only kept the SanDisk UBS, but still the unRAID does not boot properly. The new thing is when I tried changing the BIOS and only made the UBS as the bootable drive, now I get a message fromt he BIOS stating that I need to "reboot my machine, or insert a bootable device and then press any key...."

 

Please help.

 

thanks,

Sagun

Hi graywolf -

 

I already double checked my BIOS configuration, still the same problem as stated above. Do you guys think may be my USB drive has gone bad??? By the way every thing is new in my unRAID server, I did not use any old parts, hoping that I would not be facing this problem. But, I guess this is part of learning process, and we all need to do this one time or the other.

 

Thanks,

Sagun

All -

 

Now its working, somehow the BIOS setting that I changed and saved did not get saved, and that is why I was not able to boot. But, any way, I should not be worrying about if my unRAID is going to or not going to start every time I reboot my machine. Is there a solution to this problem???

 

thanks,

Sagun

Now that your BIOS is saved to what you want. Maybe do several tests of rebooting to see if it stays.

If you run into the issue of it not booting properly, then check your BIOS settings again to see if the USB is no longer set as the boot disk.

If that is the case then it appears there would be an issue with the BIOS and not unRaid itself.

 

Is your BIOS up to date?  If you upgrade the BIOS, make sure the USB is still the boot disk and wasn't reset by the update.

 

It sounds more like a BIOS issue than your USB drive.

Make sure your CMOS/BIOS battery actually works. This is a hardware/bios issue and nothing can be done about it via unRAID software.

 

A quick test is to reboot to double check the system boots properly. If it does then your next steps are to shut down and power down the system, unplug it from the wall, wait at least 15 minutes, plug it in, power up. If it doesn't boot the same way, then likely it's a batter issue.

Yes, I will be doing several restart test tomorrow morning, and making sure the USB will stay as my bootable device, (for tonight I am content with the fact that everything is back to working condition, thanks to you guys. By the way, currently I am running the Parity Check just in case if some happened to my data).

 

I bought the "BIOSTAR A760G M2+ AM2+/AM2 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard" suggested from the budget build section on this form. Does anyone else using this motherboard have this issue? If so, there is a permanent solution to it, or what I just did will save me headache in the future?

 

Thanks,

Sagun

Hi BRiT -

 

Thank you for the valueable suggestion. I will do that test tomorrow morning, as it is getting very late here. If it is a battery issue, then is it hard to change the battery in my motherboard? FYI I am using "BIOSTAR A760G M2+ AM2+/AM2 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard" .

 

Thanks,

Sagun

Hi BRiT -

 

Thank you for the valueable suggestion. I will do that test tomorrow morning, as it is getting very late here. If it is a battery issue, then is it hard to change the battery in my motherboard? FYI I am using "BIOSTAR A760G M2+ AM2+/AM2 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard" .

 

Easy. Pull the old one, put a new one in. You may need to lever it off with a flat blade screwdriver. Make sure the power is off at the wall for 30 seconds beforehand.

 

How old is the board? It usually takes quite a few years before the battery needs to be replaced.

 

"reboot my machine, or insert a bootable device and then press any key...."

 

Usually this message meant your system has found this USB stick and try to boot from this device however there is NO boot sectors your system can find on this USB stick (could be corrupted or device failure). At this moment, i will suggest you

 

(a) Get another USB stick and make it bootable with free version of unRAID.

(b) Use this newly built unRAID USB stick to boot up your system.

© If this still doesn't help, set your BIOS back to default (all BIOS should have this option) and try again

 

Regarding battery issue, if you still can see the time/date in your BIOS is up to date then your battery probably is still OK.

 

Hi neilt0 -

 

I just bought motherboard two weeks ago. That is why I am surprised if its the motherboard's battery. But, thank you so much for the diagram, I will used it in order to change my battery if needed.

 

Thanks,

Sagun

Hi GK20 -

 

I just bought the SanDisk Micro USB stick too, so I am not sure if it really was the stick. Because, after I reset the motherboard back to default and then manually changed all the setting to boot from the USB stick it started to work, so I am not sure what the problem is.

 

Regarding the time in the motherboard: I never set the motherboard's time correctly, so when I was looking at it yesterday I noticed that the time had drifted a lot, but when the unRAID was up it started showing the correct time. So, my question is does the unRAID software also set the motherboard's internal clock???

 

Thanks,

Sagun

yes. there is a configuration for unraid to get the time from a time server.

 

Hi GK20 -

 

I just bought the SanDisk Micro USB stick too, so I am not sure if it really was the stick. Because, after I reset the motherboard back to default and then manually changed all the setting to boot from the USB stick it started to work, so I am not sure what the problem is.

 

Regarding the time in the motherboard: I never set the motherboard's time correctly, so when I was looking at it yesterday I noticed that the time had drifted a lot, but when the unRAID was up it started showing the correct time. So, my question is does the unRAID software also set the motherboard's internal clock???

 

Thanks,

Sagun

 

 

new doesn't meant "it should be good" otherwise we don't need warranty. 

 

Since you have your system back, you can just keep it "as is", however if you run into same situation again down the road you might want to ask Biostar for a RMA because it looks like either you BIOS setup is easily corrupted or there are faulty components.

 

Meanwhile, since you did not set BIOS time correctly before so whatever you saw in time drafting doesn't really count. you might want to set it up to date now and see how it goes, if after weeks BIOS time start to drafting a lot (say couple days) again then you might want to ask for a RMA from Biostar, usually the Real-Time-Clock (RTC) in BIOS should not behave like this way.

 

in old days, most of computers don't connect to internet and those computers are all running on its own standalone clock. nowadays computers are connecting to Internet hence OS will leverage on those time servers online to sync up system clock, so BIOS time becomes not that significantly now.

Hi GK20 -

 

Thank you for the suggestions... I will keep this in mind. You guys have been really helpful!

 

Sagun