Server dead. Need advice

[kolla]

Hello my unraid friends,

 

My unraid server built in circa 2013 using an "MSI 880GMA-E53" MB and a cheap "AMD Sampron 140" has served me well over the years primarily running as a media server and doing not much else. It was supporting 10 HDDs also using a flashed "dell-perc-h310" controller.

It was running the latest unraid OS and recently developed an annoying fan noise. I shut the system down and cleaned all dust etc. and after making sure all connections and cables are intact tried to re-start unsuccessfully. It appears the MB is not getting any power (MB led light not on). I verified the power supply itself is OK by disconnecting all power cables and testing it standalone. (shorting the green & black MB power cable pins makes the PS fan comes alive). Also tried replacing the MB CMOS battery with no luck. So I'm coming to the realization that my MB/CPU may need replacement now.

 

My initial thinking at this stage is to re-purpose another PC HW I have at home sitting around. It  has: Asus Asus_P6X58-E_Pro MB, Intel i7 CPU and 12G RAM along with a GTX570 Graphics card currently running windows 7. What would be the safest way to swap the MB/CPU/RAM and re-use the dell controller to get the old system back up?

Don't want to take any risks fearing potential data loss..

[trurl]

Unraid keeps track of disk assignments by serial number and sounds like you have the controller fixed so those identifiers don't get mangled.

 

Many of us have changed mobo/cpu, booted up with same flash and same disks, and it just worked.

[kolla]

1 hour ago, trurl said:

Unraid keeps track of disk assignments by serial number and sounds like you have the controller fixed so those identifiers don't get mangled.

 

Many of us have changed mobo/cpu, booted up with same flash and same disks, and it just worked.

Thanks! Do you think I should hook all 10 HDs and try to bring everything together? When it powers up I should be able to inspect the syslog first and make sure all HDDs are detected OK before starting the array right? I was thinking that way if one of them don't come up for some reason I should shut down again and look for connection issues .. thoughts?

 

[trurl]

If you had the array set to autostart then you can edit config/disk.cfg to change that. It won't try to start anyway if you have more than one/two missing depending on single/dual parity.

[kolla]

27 minutes ago, trurl said:

If you had the array set to autostart then you can edit config/disk.cfg to change that. It won't try to start anyway if you have more than one/two missing depending on single/dual parity.

No I have disabled array auto-start and have single parity.

[kolla]

Before attempting to move my unraid HDDs into the older PC motherboard/CPU/memory setup, I first tried to move my DELL controller from the dead unraid box motherboard into the Asus motherboard on older PC. Installed the controller card (no disks attached) and tried booting that system up (win7 64b) as is to see if there are any issues. During boot up that system power cycled twice but on 3rd power cycle attempt  it came up and recognized the storage card in win7. However I noticed now under windows (and also on BIOS) system shows less installed memory DDR3 when the card is installed. (12G installed but shows up as 8G when the controller card is on the MB. Card removed it shows full 12G). 

Could this be a MB issue? or should I directly try to boot this motherboard/card with unraid and not worry about the issues I see in windows?

 

Edited December 20, 2020 by kolla