Second Attepmt - BIOS ISSUES on a Supermicro C2SEE


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Well, so far-so-good untill i hit a snag on the BIOS

 

The build went well

 

I have booted (without the flash drive) and the system reconizes my hard drives, and all is well

 

I have downloaded the syslunix and the "Basic" version of UNRAID and unzipped it onto my flash in order to get the GUID (i am using a Sony Micro Vault - the one recommended.

 

Now i have put my flash drive inside in my UNRAID computer in the flash drive slot on the motherboard - as shown in the picture on LIME's front page, and the only two items the BIOS is letting me boot to is a "Floppy" and a one of the hard drives - does anyone have thier BIOS setting for this board to boot to the flash?

 

By the way - thanks again for the tip on how to disable the BIOS on the Adaptec 1430SA  - BRYANTD - great tip, would never have gotton this.

 

bjp999 - as soon as i figure out how to boot i am going to do the steps as you recommended earlier. I have left one drive (a 1TB drive) unplugged - this will be my parity drive once i transfer over all my data.

 

Thanks again for all your help

 

 

Adaptec 2240900-R PCI Express 4-lane 2.5 Gb/s SATA 1430SA Kit

Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KVR1333D3N9K2/2G

CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready

ZALMAN CNPS 8700 NT 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler

SILVERSTONE SCOOL121 120mm Case Fan

Intel Pentium E2200 Allendale 2.2GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor

SUPERMICRO MBD-C2SEE-O LGA 775 Intel G43 ATX Intel Motherboard

COOLER MASTER STB-3T4-E3-GP 4-in-3 Device Module Hardisk Cage

Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

Sony MICRO Vault Tiny - 2GB

 

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Have you gotten the USB devce all formatted and configured?  That is the first step.  You likely need to get the HP format tool and run syslinux.  Until you get the USB stick properly setup, the following instructions may not work.

 

After you do, put the device into the computer (plug it in).  I suggest using one of the ports on the back of the motherboard.

 

Boot the computer and go into the BIOS.  There should be some settings for the USB devices.  You need to specify that the USB stick is either a hard disk or a Floppy (removeable) disk.  It has been a while since I did this, but somewhere I found a list of attached USB devices, and my thumbdrive was llisted there.  I selected on it and got to its device specific settings.  There I was able to select an "emulation type".  This is where I emulated the FDD ("Forced FDD").  Until I went over about 10 disks I was able to have it emulate a HDD.  Either one of these will work for you.

 

After that, you need to go to the boot menu.  If you setup the USB stick as a hard disk, you need to tell it to boot off of the hard disk first, and then select the USB "hard disk" as the top drive in the boot order.

 

If you setup the USB stick as a removable disk, you need to tell the BIOS to boot off of the removable disk, and make sure that your USB flashdisk is at the top of the list of removable drives.

 

Hope this helps.  If not, hopefully someone that has that MB will chime in with motherboard specific instructions.

 

Wish I could give you precise instructions.

 

Also, try and stick with one thread rather than creating one for each issue or question.  Later if someone is trying to follow what you did, having one thread to follow will make it easier to follow.

 

UPDATE:  Look at this thread and this thread.  Maybe they will help as well.

 

UPDATE2:  Also look here and here.

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We are up and running - thx so much :) :) :) :) :) :)

 

The difference was i moved the USB drive to the back as you recommended and all of the sudden the BIOS reconized it

 

What is wierd is in the photos of the computers made by lime they show the USB drive in a slot inside the computer on the mother board

 

Oh - well - it now works

 

Thanks for ALL YOUR HELP

 

running the disk check tonight and will start data transfer tommorrow

 

THANKS AGAIN

 

Lewis

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We are up and running - thx so much :) :) :) :) :) :)

 

The difference was i moved the USB drive to the back as you recommended and all of the sudden the BIOS reconized it

 

What is wierd is in the photos of the computers made by lime they show the USB drive in a slot inside the computer on the mother board

 

Oh - well - it now works

 

Thanks for ALL YOUR HELP

 

running the disk check tonight and will start data transfer tommorrow

 

THANKS AGAIN

 

Lewis

 

GREAT!

 

Not sure what you saw or how you were trying to mount the USB stick, but I have always put mine on one of the slots on the back of the motherboard.

 

Using one of the front case slots also should work, but the cabling to the jack needs to be done correctly.  That's why I recommended one of thr rear ones - they are part of the motherboard and next to impossible to mess up.

 

I've heard that some motherboards have a USB slot that can be used INSIDE the computer (as opposed to out the back).  I have never seen one.  You could probably install one of the USB headers inside (meant to mount in an expansion slot) and keep the USB stick insdie.  I don't recommend that because, from time to time, you will need to take it out and put it in your Windows machine.  The negative to having it on the outside is that it is subject to getting broken if you move the server.  (Mine has experienced several near misses!)  I guess there are pros and cons of each.

 

Feel free to post back with any additional questions.

 

Good luck!

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Update

 

So i began transferring my data from my NAS to my Lime Server Sunday night

 

I have it running through a gig switch and it takes about 30 minutes to transfer 4.5 gigs

 

It will take about 11 days to transfer the entire 2.5 TB from my current NAS

 

I had a big scare last night; I stopped the transfer because i realized i had set the Split Level to "0" rather than "1" (I have set up the sub-directories as "Movies" and "Music" and Documents" and "Photos" etc). So using a Split Level "1" it will keep, for instance, the contents in the "Aliens" file under "Movies" all in one disc, but will allow the Movies files (such as Aliens, Star Wars, etc) to spread over different discs). - To be honest, and i know other folks have said something simular, the Split Level is a bit confusing.

 

Anyway, I had to reboot the server to reset the split levels and when the array came back up it did not recognize any of the disks (i.e. it was like starting over). At first i paniced, then i did a search and saw that other folks had this same problem and when they reboot again it works - THANKFULLY, i rebooted twice and they came back

 

Anyway - so far, so good. I will be sure to update when i finish transferring the data.

 

As an FYI, I have not set up a parity drive or a Cache drive yet. I am going to transfer all the data over and then set those up - a Great idea from bjb999

 

 

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Normally, saving 4.5GB to an unprotected unRAID data drive (no parity protection) should only take about 4 minutes, so there may be something wrong, or the other NAS is *very* slow.  You might try to copy the 4.5GB from the NAS to an ordinary desktop to compare.

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I agree with RobJ.  This speed is far too slow.  In fact that sounds like the amount of time it would take if parity WERE enabled.  Are you sure that parity is disabled/unassigned?

 

If so, post a syslog and smartctl reports on your drives.  Something is not right.  (Follow the troubleshooting link in my sig for instructions)

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Man - you guys are all over this, this is incredibly impressive.  :)

 

So i ran some tests tonight, it is definitely the NAS that i am pulling it from which is the problem NOT the Lime Server.

 

I am running a Promise Smartstor ns4300 - I tried coping files to my computer from the NS4300 and it was just as slow - not sure, but i have the NS4300 on a RAID 5, so that may be the problem.

 

I then tried coping a file from my computer to the Lime Server and it was a lot faster.

 

Thanks again for the quick observations, will just have to live with it till its done on Sunday.

 

 

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I did some more reading in these forums and folks have had problems with transfer speeds switched cables

 

So I switched to all new cables and guess what - transfer speed jumped up to 20mps - so it is now showing about a 1 day left to transfer vs. the previous 8 days - HUGE

 

So i should be wrapped up Thursday

 

I still need to set a Parity drive and a Cache drive.

 

Thanks again for everyones input

 

Lewis

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not sure if my problem is a Bios issue or not, I recently updated my motherboard to a Supermicro C2SEE, problem is that UnRaid refuses to boot with any thing over 11 drives attached. I have tried everything listed in prior posts and still am not able to add anything over 11 hard drives, as soon as 12th hard drive is unplugged system boots.

 

I am using two Promise TX2 133 and one TX2 100 IDE Controller Cards in PCI slots for 10 hard drives and 1 SATA hard drive as parity, these cards worked fine in my old ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 mother board with 12 hard drives attached so I expected them to work with the Supermicro C2SEE board.

 

I know the 12th hard drive is recognized by the Bios because I see it listed under boot drives list. The USB is set to FORCED FDD and shows at the top of removable drives.

 

Has any body used these IDE controller cards successfully with the Supermicro C2SEE board with more than 11 hard drives? and if so what were your Bios settings, my settings are below

 

Advanced

- USB Configuration

---- USB Functions ENABLED

---- Legacy USB Support AUTO

---- USB 2.0 Controller Mode HISPEED

---- BIOS EHCI Hand-off ENABLED

---- USB Mass Storage Device Contiguration

-------- Device #1 USB drive

-------- Emulation Type FORCED FDD

 

Boot

- Removable Drives

(USB is at the top of the list)

- Boot Device Priority

(USB is at the top of the list)

 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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I don't have any helpful ideas, just one comment.  The older Promise cards are known for conflicts when multiple cards are installed.  Some folks have no problems, but others have had issues getting more than one Promise card to work, in some machines.

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Yea, I suppose that just because they worked in the old MB doesn't mean they will work in the Supermicro C2SEE may have just gotten lucky before. I tried everything I could find in the forums so I doubt there is anything new, thought I'd ask anyway.

 

What baffles me the most is that the Bios see the hard drives fine, whatever the problem is it's not specific to a flash drive either, it does the same thing with my second flash drive also, unplug the 12th drive and boots fine.

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Running through my first parity build right now...

 

Just a few notes... I use a sandisk cruzer, it was a pain to delete the existing partition and rebuild/format for unraid but after that was complete (I hate the stupid thumbdrive software these days), boot to Unraid was no-config needed in bios.  I even used the USB ports on the board (inside the case) as the OP started to do.

 

20MB/s still seems a bit slow for copying to a unprotected array.  When I was running my desktop to unraid tests, I would get 30-40MB/s.   Now transferring from my NAS was 20MB/s though since I was doing it from my XP machine (if you do it through a 3rd computer it downloads the info then uploads it to unraid, so you take a ~50% hit).

 

Lewis - make sure you check your individual disks for proper splitting, I have 1 share called storage and I had to use a splitlevel of 2 for %share%\movies\%title% structure.

 

 

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Guys -

 

Just wanted to give everyone an update and say thanks

 

I have been running the unraid server now for over a week and everything has been very smooth

 

I have checked parity a few times just to be safe and it works great

 

The server gets recognized instantly by all my computers and data backup-exchange has been effortless.

 

I am a bit unhappy with my fan selection - i started with these:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835220027

 

but they would not kick up in speed and my drives were running at up to 48 degrees or so, so then i switched to these:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103024

 

these fans keep the drives easily in the 30's but are noticably louder - so i am looking for new ones

 

Ideally i will eventually figure out how to have the fans turn on only when the drives they are cooling are running (I have case fan and a killer CPU fan so the drive fans only really need to run when the drives are.)

 

This fan stuff to me is just tweaking which is fun - the ease by which I was able to get my unraid server up and running was night-and-day vs my attempt two years ago - i am so glad i tried again

 

Thanks to all the guys - especially bjb999, I would never have gotton here without your help

 

I will be busy over the next year filling up my unused 3TB of space

 

THANKS AGAIN

Lewis

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Guys -

 

Just wanted to give everyone an update and say thanks

 

I have been running the unraid server now for over a week and everything has been very smooth

 

I have checked parity a few times just to be safe and it works great

 

The server gets recognized instantly by all my computers and data backup-exchange has been effortless.

 

I am a bit unhappy with my fan selection - i started with these:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835220027

 

but they would not kick up in speed and my drives were running at up to 48 degrees or so, so then i switched to these:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103024

 

these fans keep the drives easily in the 30's but are noticably louder - so i am looking for new ones

 

Ideally i will eventually figure out how to have the fans turn on only when the drives they are cooling are running (I have case fan and a killer CPU fan so the drive fans only really need to run when the drives are.)

 

This fan stuff to me is just tweaking which is fun - the ease by which I was able to get my unraid server up and running was night-and-day vs my attempt two years ago - i am so glad i tried again

 

Thanks to all the guys - especially bjb999, I would never have gotton here without your help

 

I will be busy over the next year filling up my unused 3TB of space

 

THANKS AGAIN

Lewis

 

Glad to hear your array is working well!  The occasional thank you is very appreciated!  Enjoy your array!  ;D ;D ;D

 

You might want to look here for fans.  They have a great selection and good prices.

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