Im going crazy please help(C2SEE)

[brandon12777]

Ok I have a C2SEE that I setup with 3 drives but didn't assign a parity drive and transferred over everything from my

HTPC. Everything was working great then I shut down and installed 3 more drives as I prepared to purchase a key and do a

full parity check.

 

It now will not load unraid it still boots to the USB just fine after the bzimage loads it goes through its various stuff then just gets stuck in a loop. This problem initially happened when I just had the 3 drives and I used this post to sort it out.( http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5084.0 )

 

Now I unplugged the 3 added drives trying to see if I can just boot with the first 3 drives plugged in and I cant I feel like I have tried every possible combination of settings under the "IDE" menu and I cant figure it out. Someone please help me figure this out.

 

Thanks,

Brandon

[ohlwiler]

Can you boot with zero drives attached?  Have you run a memtest. Have you tried recreating the USB stick from scratch? Have you tried a different USB stick?

 

I have this same board on my test server. I have my IDE settings as follows:

 

Configure SATA#1 - AHCI

Max Ports on SATA#1 - 6 Ports

AHCI Port0 - Not Installed

AHCI Port1 - Not Installed

AHCI Port2 - Not Installed

AHCI Port3 - Not Installed

AHCI Port4 - Not Installed

AHCI Port5 - Not Installed

Hot Plug  - Enabled

Hard Disk Write Protect - Disabled

IDE Detect Time Out (sec) - 35

Hard Disk Detect Time - 1 Second

 

If you set your drives as not installed the bios will not try to detect them but unRAID will see them. This will keep the hard disks from stealing the boot priority from the USB stick (Forced FDD).

 

[brandon12777]

Thanks for the response ohlwiler.

 

I can boot fine if I fully disable the IDE controller.

 

Doing a memtest now 60% no issues yet might leave it running while I sleep.

 

Haven t messed with the USB stick yet because it did work for me and it will boot with no drives

so it didn't seem like that was the issue.

 

I tried your settings which I belive were the settings I used when I first booted the 3 drive array and it worked fine.

But when trying them now it will not boot just its stuck in a loop.

 

Thanks,

Brandon

[ohlwiler]

If a clean USB stick exhibits the same behavior, the problem must be in hardware. Have you tried using your current unRAID stick to boot another computer?

[brandon12777]

Memtest fine. I already transferred over all of my media to 2 data drives,

can I format the usb stick and reinstall unraid without effecting that?

[Joe L.]

Memtest fine. I already transferred over all of my media to 2 data drives,

can I format the usb stick and reinstall unraid without effecting that?

Yes, you can, but take a screen-shot of your devices page so you'll know how to re-assign the disks back to their respective slots in the array.

(make sure you don't assign a data drive to he parity slot in the array, as that would destroy the data on it.  Other than making sure you assign the disk with parity on it to the parity slot you are able to assign any data disk as you like to any data slot in the array)

[brandon12777]

Ok i tried a format and fresh unraid 4.6 on the USB drive.

It will still boot fine if I disable the SATA controllers but when

I enable them so the hard drives are detected it gets stuck in

and endless loop.

 

This is extremely frustrating as it was working just fine and I committed all my

media to it. I thought that it would be no problem to add the other drives and

be fully up and running.

 

If there is more ideas keep them coming I'll try anything.

 

Thanks,

Brandon

[brandon12777]

Does this mean anything? Error log?

 

Thanks,

Brandon

 

edit: Would it be better if I took pictures of the screen information while its stuck in its boot loop?

ldlinux.txt

[ohlwiler]

It will still boot fine if I disable the SATA controllers but when

I enable them so the hard drives are detected it gets stuck in

and endless loop.

 

Where are you disabling the SATA controllers? Are you referring to the motherboard SATA ports? It is not necessary for the motherboard to detect the drives, in fact it is preferred so that the flash drive will always be the boot device.

 

Perhaps it is one of your drives causing the problem. Try booting with just one drive attached. Try a different SATA cable. I have never seen the problem you describe and I don't see what you were referring to in this thread, can you elaborate?

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5084.0

[brandon12777]

What I am refering to when I say I can boot fine if I disable the SATA controllers is

under the IDE menu you can change SATA #1 from compatible/enhanced/disable and SATA #2 from enhanced/disable.

 

If I disable both it boots fine. The drives are 2TB WD  green EARS with jumpers set and like I said I cannot boot

with the 3 I originally had booted with and running unraid transferred all my media too. The BIOS decects the drives

fine when using "auto" even though as previously discussed auto doesn't work you have to choose "not installed"

 

Post #4 on the linked thread refers to this it is what I read when originally setting up when I experienced the same problem and

it is that "not installed" setting which allowed me to boot but now it doesn't seem to matter.

 

 

[jamerson9]

Does this mean anything? Error log?

 

Thanks,

Brandon

 

edit: Would it be better if I took pictures of the screen information while its stuck in its boot loop?

 

The error messages off the screen might help and explain what you mean by a boot loop.

[brandon12777]

Ok it appears that one of the original three 2tb disks is the reason its not booting.

Tried to get it to boot with just that drive on a different SATA cable on a different port

and even on a different SATA power cable and it wont either way.

 

I guess my problem now is that the disk that wont boot is one of the data disks I just transferred everything

to. I did not assign a parity disk yet as I thought it would be ok to transfer everything then do a parity check

after that was all completed.

 

SO now did I just lose all the data on that drive? Any ideas why it wont boot? The bios can still detect that drive

and it was working fine for 3-4 days while everything was transferred to it.

 

Thanks,

Brandon

[Joe L.]

Ok it appears that one of the original three 2tb disks is the reason its not booting.

Tried to get it to boot with just that drive on a different SATA cable on a different port

and even on a different SATA power cable and it wont either way.

 

I guess my problem now is that the disk that wont boot is one of the data disks I just transferred everything

to. I did not assign a parity disk yet as I thought it would be ok to transfer everything then do a parity check

after that was all completed.

 

SO now did I just lose all the data on that drive? Any ideas why it wont boot? The bios can still detect that drive

and it was working fine for 3-4 days while everything was transferred to it.

 

Thanks,

Brandon

You can try a different power supply cable and/or sata cable to that drive.  Perhaps they are the reason it causes the boot sequence to stop. Or, put that disk on a different disk controller and see if it will be recognized.  (it might not cause the boot sequence to stop if it is not on the motherboard SATA controller.)

 

Joe L.

[jamerson9]

Ok it appears that one of the original three 2tb disks is the reason its not booting.

Tried to get it to boot with just that drive on a different SATA cable on a different port

and even on a different SATA power cable and it wont either way.

 

I guess my problem now is that the disk that wont boot is one of the data disks I just transferred everything

to. I did not assign a parity disk yet as I thought it would be ok to transfer everything then do a parity check

after that was all completed.

 

SO now did I just lose all the data on that drive? Any ideas why it wont boot? The bios can still detect that drive

and it was working fine for 3-4 days while everything was transferred to it.

 

Thanks,

Brandon

If you need to get the data off and the drive itself is just having problems with that specific mbd/controller, then try it on another computer or use an external drive case. I think all major OSs will have a method to at least read reiserfs partitions. Which is one of the advantages of the UnRaid architecture. If the drive itself is bad then getting your data off will get complicated.

 

It was ok to transfer without a parity disk installed, under the assumption that you still had the original source copies of your data. I think we have to remember, in my personal case from excruciating experience at least  :'(, that back up means duplication not protection.

[brandon12777]

Ok update/recap.

 

I have 6 Drives installed right now four 2tb WD green EARS (with jumpers) and two 1tb WD green non-ears.

 

I first booted with 3 of the 2tb drives and transfered everyhing to 2 of them(no parity drive) from my HTPC.

Then after adding the fourth 2tb drive and the two 1tb drives and trying to reboot is when I ran into my problems.

With everyones help here I have acutally isolated the issue of not being able to fully boot. The problem is with one of

the 2tb drives ( one of them being a drive I transferred data to already).

 

The issue is when either/both of these drives is plugged in it wont fully boot and gets stuck in a nonstop loading loop after BZroot and BZimage have loaded. I have tried different SATA data and SATA power cables(even with it being the only drive plugged in) know to be working with the other drives, I have tried different SATA ports know to be working with the other hard drives and no matter what I get the same issue. I also plugged this drives into my main WIN7 machine and it is detected fine though I didn't try to format it or anything as it has data.

 

This is really baffling me the help from you guys so far has been great allowing me to apparently narrow this issue BUT I absolutely don't

understand why this drive specifically is causing a issue especially why would it when I already had booted with and ran fine for 3-4 days transferring 1tb+ to?

 

Thanks for the continued help! I really want to sort this out so I can buy unraid and put this server in a closet.

 

-Brandon

[Joe L.]

Ok update/recap.

 

I have 6 Drives installed right now four 2tb WD green EARS (with jumpers) and two 1tb WD green non-ears.

 

I first booted with 3 of the 2tb drives and transfered everyhing to 2 of them(no parity drive) from my HTPC.

Then after adding the fourth 2tb drive and the two 1tb drives and trying to reboot is when I ran into my problems.

With everyones help here I have acutally isolated the issue of not being able to fully boot. The problem is with one of

the 2tb drives ( one of them being a drive I transferred data to already).

 

The issue is when either/both of these drives is plugged in it wont fully boot and gets stuck in a nonstop loading loop after BZroot and BZimage have loaded. I have tried different SATA data and SATA power cables(even with it being the only drive plugged in) know to be working with the other drives, I have tried different SATA ports know to be working with the other hard drives and no matter what I get the same issue. I also plugged this drives into my main WIN7 machine and it is detected fine though I didn't try to format it or anything as it has data.

 

This is really baffling me the help from you guys so far has been great allowing me to apparently narrow this issue BUT I absolutely don't

understand why this drive specifically is causing a issue especially why would it when I already had booted with and ran fine for 3-4 days transferring 1tb+ to?

 

Thanks for the continued help! I really want to sort this out so I can buy unraid and put this server in a closet.

 

-Brandon

I would strongly suggest you perform a memory test.  (I'd guess you would need to disconnect that drive to perform it)

If you've run several hours of memory test already, please let us know.  I have the same C2SEE MB here in a server and have never run into the issues you are experiencing.  I usually am running it headless, but I can always put a monitor on it to let you know of specific BIOS options if you do not get it figured out.

[ohlwiler]

Although your problems could be with your motherboard, I suspect the problem is the hard disk. Perhaps the combination of the hard disk, the SATA cable and the SATA port on the motherboard create some sort of stability problem. I have never heard of this before, but since you can access it on your desktop, then at least you can get to the data.

 

What I would do. Buy a key so you can access more than three drives. Create an array with your drives that you have filled with data (excluding the problem drive). Most importantly, assign a parity drive from the start. Do not move data to the array, only copy it so you have a backup. Exercise it by writing with Teracopy which will do CRC checks on any copies to verify things are working well. Once you are comfortable, move your data over.

 

Before adding drives to expand the array, perform a preclear on the drive.

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Add_Ons#Preclear_Disk

[brandon12777]

Ok guys some more information for you detectives.

 

Memtest 17 passes for 10 hours no errors.

 

Plugged the drive causing the issue into my WIN7 machine seems to be detected fine shows up under storage manager.

 

I booted to a Ubuntu USB drive my thinking being that I was going to try to get the data off this drive and while Ubuntu was

booting I got the same errors and boot loop that I get when trying to boot unraid with this drive installed. I took pictures of the errors

maybe you can make some sense of them. http://picasaweb.google.com/brandon12777/UNRAID#

 

So should I give up on this drive(or at least getting data off it)? Should I try to format it in windows and see if it works fully?

 

Thanks again,

Brandon

[Kaygee]

Hi Brandon,

 

Can you describe your hardware please? Drive to sata port and power supply.

 

I've seen these errors before, with bad SATA port, with bad power splitter, with bad sata caddy/backplane. I know you've swapped drive on sata ports on the motherboard.

 

If you have a caddy/backplane plu the drive directly to the port and use a sata plug from the PSU not an adapter if possible. Unplug power from all other drives/backplane ports or caddies.

 

Windows tends to simply throw away errors like these until it fails to write/read then reports a bad block.

 

Every screen shot shows ata 2. 

[ohlwiler]

So should I give up on this drive(or at least getting data off it)? Should I try to format it in windows and see if it works fully?

 

Give this reiserFS windows driver a try.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2057.msg14950#msg14950

[brandon12777]

Kaygee,

 

When it was working in my unraid box it was plugged directly into PSU sata plug and directly to

the MOBO with SATA cable. I did try multiple SATA ports, cables and PSU cables even trying a PSU 4 pin with sata adapter

and each time with the same result when ever the problem drive was installed. PSU: Corsair VX450 brand new and the

drive is a brand new 2tb WD green ears first time powered when it was working with unraid initially.

 

The screen shots are from my main Win7 box while trying to boot to a ubuntu flash drive and

the errors are exactly the same on that machine while trying to boot ubuntu. That computer

has a different MOBO but drive still attached directly to MOBO and PSU(corsair HX620). It shows

ata2 I assume because that is the port the drive in question is plugged into.

 

ohlwiler,

 

Thanks for that driver using it and YAReg I can see all the drive's data and successfully transferred one

5gb mkv file off that played fine so it looks like the drive is somewhat working?

[Joe L.]

Does that drive have a jumper for SATA-1 vs. SATA-2

 

Joe L.

[ohlwiler]

It may be worth pulling the data off and deleting the partition and try preclearing it. If it causes the same problem again RMA it.

 

I've been using unRAID since the early days and although I've had a few problems along the way, once you get things working, it just keeps on working.

[burtjr]

The pictures look eerily familiar to an unjumperd advanced format wd20ears drive also. I am not sure if the pictures are in order, but it looks like it is working down to UDMA/33. I wonder if it would eventually boot once it got to 33 or if the sequence would start again. I did not see the type of drives installed. Does one happen to be a advanced format WD20ears?

[brandon12777]

Yes it is a WD Green EARS drive and it does have the 7/8 jumper

in place I even switched jumpers from another known working drive because

I had thought the same thing might be possible. The sequence continues nonstop

as best I can tell I have let it try for 5+ min before.

 

I am going to try to get as much data off it as possible and then preclear it as suggested.