DMills Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 Apologies in advance for the long post, am hoping someone can help me with expanding my current Unraid system: • MB: Asus Maximus VIII Extreme • CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.00GHz • RAM: 64GB DDR4 • GPU: Onboard (Intel Z170 I think?) • SATA: 2 x Marvell 9215 cards + Onboard • NIC: 2 x Asus XG-C100C 10G • PS: ThermalTake Toughpower XT Platinum 1275w • Drives: 1 x Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVME 250GB 2 x Kingston 240GB SSD 1 x Hitachi 4TB 7 x Seagate 4TB I actually have 8 Seagate 4TB drives in the system, and want to add at least 2 more, but the minute I plug in the 8th drive, it will no longer power on. I'm using a combination 5 of the onboard SATA ports (all are HDD) as well as 5 of the 8 available SATA ports on the two Marvel cards (3 ports are HDD, 2 are SSD). I have the drives power setup as follows: 3 modular cables connected to the PS (2 x SATA cables, 1 x Molex) 2 x SSDs are connected via a Molex->SATA cable 3 x HDDs are connected via a Molex->SATA cable 5 HDDs are connected via direct SATA cables (2 separate cables with 4 connectors each, 3 drives on one, 2 on the other) I've tried a few of the other SATA drives to rule out one of them being bad, it happened no matter which drive was the 8th one. I tried to enable SSU (staggered spin-up) for two of the drives (even though I read that it is not a good idea with Unraid), but it did not help. Maybe I needed to enable it on all of them? I dug into the specs of the PS, it's got a single 5v rail rated at 25A max. Which is apparently low? It was a great PS when I ran 3 GPU's and only 3-4 drives, but it's just not working for me now. I used the Seasonic online wattage calculator, and it says I should be fine with a 475W PS. So before I run out and buy a new PS, I'm concerned now over that fact that using wattage to tell whether a PS will work or not is not the measure I should be using. So... Am I just setting the power up wrong? Do I somehow have a bad drive(s)? Should I turn on SSU for all the HDD drives? And if it's the PS, given the above, which one should I replace it with? Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 36 minutes ago, DMills said: SATA: 2 x Marvell Those are notorious for causing issues. Quote Link to comment
DMills Posted June 24, 2020 Author Share Posted June 24, 2020 6 minutes ago, jonathanm said: Those are notorious for causing issues. Oh wow, I didn't know that, what sort of issues? Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 Google this: unraid marvell site:forums.unraid.net Quote Link to comment
DMills Posted June 24, 2020 Author Share Posted June 24, 2020 Thanks jonathanm, I will look into replacing them, although I've not had any drives drop off at any time, it just refuses to start with too many connected to the system at all. Good to know I bought the crappiest SATA cards around though LOL. Quote Link to comment
Vr2Io Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, DMills said: but the minute I plug in the 8th drive, it will no longer power on. Although Marvell SATA controller always not recommend, but the symptoms likely power issue. How long that PSU serve for you ? In fact, to power up eight 3.5 harddisk was a easy job. Some tips, when you power on, does FANs will spinup one shoot ? You should also check the 5v reading in BIOS. Edited June 24, 2020 by Benson Quote Link to comment
DMills Posted June 24, 2020 Author Share Posted June 24, 2020 1 minute ago, Benson said: Although Marvell SATA controller always not recommend, but the symptoms likely power issue. How long that PSU serve for you ? In fact, to power up eight 3.5 harddisk was a easy job. Some tips, when you power on, does FANs will spinup one shoot ? I've probably had the PS for about 4 years, maybe a bit longer? With the 8th drive connected, the fans kind of kick a bit, a fairly loud click from the PS, then nothing. I have to unplug the PS, pull the power from the 8th drive, plug the PS back in before it will start. Quote Link to comment
Vr2Io Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 Pls provide the 5v BIOS reading which with 7th harddisk. BTW, it should PSU porblem, not power rating problem. I would suggest you only insert one memory stick to rule out correct or not. RAM module may be powerup by 5v. Quote Link to comment
JonathanM Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 7 minutes ago, DMills said: With the 8th drive connected, the fans kind of kick a bit, a fairly loud click from the PS, then nothing. Can you verify the power cables are correct for that PSU? There have been instances of people thinking modular power cables are all the same, when in fact they can be very specific to your PSU and using a modular cable from another PSU can cause very bad damage. Quote Link to comment
DMills Posted June 24, 2020 Author Share Posted June 24, 2020 12 minutes ago, jonathanm said: Can you verify the power cables are correct for that PSU? There have been instances of people thinking modular power cables are all the same, when in fact they can be very specific to your PSU and using a modular cable from another PSU can cause very bad damage. I can verify they are in fact the ThermalTake cables. I agree, some of them look similar, but I'm hardly using any of the cables it came with due to no external GPU's, so no need to go looking for other cables Quote Link to comment
DMills Posted June 24, 2020 Author Share Posted June 24, 2020 17 minutes ago, Benson said: Pls provide the 5v BIOS reading which with 7th harddisk. BTW, it should PSU porblem, not power rating problem. I would suggest you only insert one memory stick to rule out correct or not. RAM module may be powerup by 5v. I'll check the BIOS and see if it has that capability. I'm not sure how one RAM module will help rule something out, can you explain? Quote Link to comment
Vr2Io Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 (edited) 6 minutes ago, DMills said: I'll check the BIOS and see if it has that capability. I'm not sure how one RAM module will help rule something out, can you explain? If your motherboard use 5v source to power up memory, then with less module to use 5v, then it may success to power up the 8th disk. Or you could unplug both SSD power, because SSD only use 5v. Edited June 24, 2020 by Benson Quote Link to comment
DMills Posted June 24, 2020 Author Share Posted June 24, 2020 2 minutes ago, Benson said: If your motherboard use 5v source to power up memory, then with less module to use 5v, then it may success to power up the 8th disk. Ah OK, I can try that next. The BIOS reports 12.096v, 5.000v and 3.248v Quote Link to comment
Vr2Io Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 (edited) 5.000v reading is normal, but 3.248 not so good. Edited June 24, 2020 by Benson Quote Link to comment
DMills Posted June 24, 2020 Author Share Posted June 24, 2020 15 minutes ago, Benson said: If your motherboard use 5v source to power up memory, then with less module to use 5v, then it may success to power up the 8th disk. Welp, that didn't go so well. It didn't like one RAM module, so had to use two. Same result, just a click, no boot. Unplug the 8th drive, no issue. Quote Link to comment
Vr2Io Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 (edited) How about if you remove i.e. 1 of 7 disk and plugin the 8th one. If same problem occur it should disk problem. Or you have another 8th disk for test ? Edited June 24, 2020 by Benson Quote Link to comment
DMills Posted June 24, 2020 Author Share Posted June 24, 2020 So, instead of swapping drives around, I decided to remove both Marvel cards and just deal with the onboard SATA ports. I think one of the drives may actually be bad, so decided to put the Marvel cards back in. No matter which drives I put on the cards, nothing is detected. Both cards. So weird. I think my machine is haunted. Oh well, once I get a new non-Marvel card I will start testing things again and try to determine what is at fault. Bad news is, until I get a new card, no cache drive Thanks for all your help @jonathanm and @Benson! Quote Link to comment
Vr2Io Posted June 25, 2020 Share Posted June 25, 2020 (edited) Note, FYR, now I think problem ( auto power off ) come from that "disk", it short circuit so causs PSU OVP ( over load protection ). Edited June 25, 2020 by Benson Quote Link to comment
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