{Solved} Need some advice

I have been having some issues with my unRAID server as of late. 1st let me give you my specs.

AMD 939  AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+

5 gigs of DDR ram

Asus motherboard

PCI Sata card

PCI Gig card

Thermaltake 500W Power Supply

First I was having some freezing and the system was hanging. I could do a restart and it seemed fine... this only seemed to happen after I added a Cashe drive. I tracked it down to what I though was just not enough power for the 8 drives that I have in there (one drive is a IDE to start up unraid since the motherboard couldn't start up on the USB)

After replacing the power supply with the recommending guides on this site everything seemed to be okay, but then I got another hang up and with a closer look one of the drives was failing to initialize. After some research and checking the drive, the drive being fine, I did a wipe and had unRAID rebuild that drive.

Everything has been going fine for a few months until my XBMC started to freeze and buffer. I thought that it was just that one computer because everything else I was streaming to my other computers would stream with out a hitch. So after many hours of tinkering with XBMC cleaning up add ons and things I was still having the problem. So I decided that it was time to reload that computer any way (Windows box). I reloaded the box and got my settings back the way that I liked them and things seemed fine for a little while, but then I started to get the freezing and buffering on that box again.

Then I got some unRAID crashing again.

Even the unRAID box couldn't complete a parity check with out hanging.

Looking into the logs I saw that there was some issues with one of the hard drive connections. I went though and double checking all of the connections. Everything was connected up correctly.

I feel that it may be the Motherboard giving up on the sata ports cause if I do get that error the only way to fix it is to have unRAID reboot.

Here is where I would like some advice... I don't have a lot of money, but I did want to upgrade my unRAID server.

I can do it as follows:

A: I could purchase another Sata card to resolve the issue until I can afford the upgrade (which is looking to be the cheapest option)

B: I could take my current setup that I am running XMBC on (AMD 965, 6 gigs of DDR2 ram asus MB) and make it my new unRAID server sertup and purchase a Roku or something simular (How ever I have my surround system running through a toshlink from my PC right now so I may not have surround sound) I would then have to figure out how to enable Sickbeard, SABnzbd, and PLEX on the unRAID.

So there it is. Please let me know what you think.

I would recommend running memtest over night to see if you have memory problems

The first step is really to isolate exactly what's going on here.

I agree with running Memtest overnight to see if you have any memory issues.

If not, then the next step depends on what version of UnRAID you've running.  If you're on v5 (and can thus freely move drives to different SATA ports) I'd do a bit of experimentation to see if the problems you're seeing stay with the troublesome drives; or stay with the ports.  That would be useful info ... and may help you confirm that the issue is indeed the SATA card ... in which case buying another one makes sense.

Well I think that it's more of a problem with the sata ports on the mother board and not any add in cards.

I will run a team test and report.

memtest over night would be my first call

2) check the cables to the drive...I had a dodgy power cable that was intermittent

Hi UtahDeLorean

If you need some help and are in the Salt Lake area I am willing to help.

Just pm me if you are interested I have various cards and cables so we and a extra power supply to be able to identify what is going on.

Thank you

Thornwood

Hi UtahDeLorean

If you need some help and are in the Salt Lake area I am willing to help.

Just pm me if you are interested I have various cards and cables so we and a extra power supply to be able to identify what is going on.

 

Thank you

Thornwood

Thanks... I have a buddy that lives a few blocks from me that could help too... but I figured that posting on here would go far.

I finally got some time to look into it further.

I think that I got it figured out. I noticed that my cache drive wasn't showing up... I went to inspect and found that the cable wasn't connected very well... So I pulled that cable and put a new cable in.

Now it seems all good... I don't think that most people would have noticed, but when one has a 1Gbps connection downloading to my Unraid server it makes a big difference.

I know that I still need to do an upgrade, but now it looks like I have some time to plan it out and get the funds together to do it properly!