hansolo77

Yeah, I think the SMS is the easiest for me to set up though. I'm not running an email server, and to be honest I don't check my email but like maybe once or twice a day. I'll look at those config files you pointed at and see what I can do. In other news... UPDATE! (notice the trend? heh) Just ordered the new PSU from NewEgg. I looked at various power supplies, comparing wattage to amps, Active PFC, price, reviews, and modular capabilities . Since I only have to plug in the 6 molex for the backplanes and the 24-pin and 4/8 pin motherboard cables, having all that extra stuff built into the PSU would just really hurt the air flow. I actually decided to go with the refurbished model since it was a lot cheaper, and comes with the 1 year warranty that the manufacturer is standing behind that it will work as advertised (that, and the NEW model was out of stock). I realize that if it were NEW it would have 7 years, but the reviews I read on NewEgg and a few other sites all say that Corsair did a bang up job refurbishing this model. Anyway, some of their higher wattage PSU's have lower reviews, and they mostly point to them dying withing the first few hours. So I'm going to run this thing for a few days non-stop to make sure it is solid. So right now, my plan is to swap out the current server's PSU (Antec HGC 750) with the new Corsair, then plug the Antec into my HTPC that has the failing PSU. One thing at a time! Should everything remain stable, I'll start saving up for the mobo/cpu/ram bundle. Then I'll get the expander card. THEN I'll work on upgrading to the better cpu/ram.

If you're getting a BSOD and your system reboots, try running NirSoft's BlueScreenView (get it here). On my system, it was kinda hit or miss. It was pointing to IRQ issues, Memory Issues, Drivers, etc. In the end, I think my problem is my bad PSU. All the BSODs I was getting were just from whatever the system was doing at the time.

Nice! For the moment, I'm just going to configure alerts for HIGH temps. I tried doing it before, but the alerts were too long and got split between multiple text messages. That's all fine and good, but my carrier kinda locks up when it's more than one message at a time. I would get message 3 of 4 first, then 1 of 4, then 4 of 4, then 2 of 4, etc. It was all mixed up and hard to understand. Is there a simple way to configure the text messaging to just say "Rail 1 Bay 3 drive is too hot" or "Rail 2 Bay 4 drive has a new bad sector"?

It's too bad Scanner doesn't keep any logs of drive temps (or does it?). I started up the system-wide defrag before I left for work, came home and it was done. So Scanner just showed the current temps (which were down around 27 since the server went into standby after the defag activities). The defrag did complete though, so I know at least the controller and backplanes (that HAVE drives in them) are all working great.

I ran the system all day today, and it never went above 37, hottest drive stayed around 39. I plan on doing a load test tomorrow by doing a defrag on each drive. But it looks like everything is going smoothly. I really like this case!

Update! I don't have enough money this week with bills to be able to buy a new power supply. But I spent the day off today putting all my old equipment into the new Norco case. The first major hurdle I had was the power supply not fitting into the case. Closer inspection revealed this is also bent out of shape. I removed the mounting plate and installed it to the power supply then kinda "forcibly" jiggled it into place. It's not screwed into the case though (I'm going to have to drill some new holes). I figured that would be a waste of time since the case isn't moving, and I want to wait until I have a new power supply to put in it. I did manage to do a bit of testing on the backplanes though, and verified that at least 1 drive bay on each plane was working. I wasn't supposed to get the replacement drive screws from Norco until tomorrow but they arrived today around 4:30 pm. So I started screwing in drives and now have 8 fully mounted in the case and are all working fine. Strangely, Windows booted up with these drives in "Offline" mode. DrivePool was saying all the drives were missing, but they showed up in Scanner. Windows Disk Manager showed them listed but they were all offline. Right-click, pick "online" and they all woke up and started chugging away. Everything looks good. The fans in the case are actually just as loud as my old server's 6x120mm fans, so that's a plus that they're not louder. I let the system run for about an hour and the system temp didn't get any higher than 33c and the drives no higher than 37c. I put the case into the closet (door is open about an inch, which is normal) and the case temp only went up to about 37c and the hottest drive is now only 40c. I like it! I don't know what it'll look like later once it's full of 24 drives, but it's good so far!

I just picked up a Norco RPC-4224 case off eBay for $300. Unfortunately it was damaged in shipping due to poor packing by FedEx, but everything works! eBay is great like that.

How did you configure Scanner to have them sorted by Rail? I assume that's just what you call each backplane on the case right? So did you provide each drive with a location as "Rail # and Bay #" ? Now that I've got that case too, I would like a similar organization. Currently I'm sorting by controller, and had each drive label in Windows identify each drive.

There's gotta be something in the Event Logs.

Something else to consider... is your server going into standby at all, or is it on 24/7? It might be crashing when the system goes into standby, or wakes up. Just a thought I just had, might not apply.

Thanks Chris! Will update when more news happens!

Do you need audio on a server? See if you can disable it in your BIOS. Without drivers, that "might" be something? I know on my server, I have no use for Audio, so I have it disabled in my BIOS. Windows doesn't even detect any audio hardware then. As for memory and hard drive tests, I use Memtest86 but Microsoft has one built into Windows. I think you access it through boot menu (F8 before Windows loads), though I'm not sure it's included or not in Win8/10. As for hard drives, I have LOTS of programs. I highly recommend getting Hiren's Boot CD (link). Every tinker-er should have it. Burn the CD then enable your BIOS to boot from it. It has Windows, DOS and Linux utilities to access various parts of the computer at low-level, and they're all completely free. They're just all collected on 1 disk with a realy easy menu to navigate to what you want. They have so much good stuff in there, like AntiVirus, HDD test and repair tools, Drivers, Backup and Recovery, and lots more. You can also run it in Windows and see if there are helpful programs you can run from there too. Also, I just checked, and they have Memtest86 on there as well! The HDD tool I'd recommend is HDAT.

Yeah I have mixed feelings about it. I emailed the seller on eBay to thank him for the sale and fast shipping, and mentioned to him about the packaging and damage. He told me that he paid extra for the FedEx store to package it for him. So this is really FedEx's fault. He asked for pictures, so I sent him the links to those images I posted here. He said he was going to complain to the store about it. Would be nice if FedEx offered him a refund, and awesome if he forwarded the refund to me since I have to live with it. All in all though, I'm really not going to be bitter about it. The case wasn't brand new and I didn't buy it at a retail store, so this sort of thing can happen. I thought about maybe asking Norco if they think the parts could be replaced, but it's not just the plastic, it's the metal plate that's bent out of shape so I'm not sure if they can do anything with that. They would have to replace the entire front bezel (it's all one solid piece, and goes all the way over to the power buttons on the other handles) AND the metal plates they're screwed in to. I'll have to look and see if the plates are removable, but I doubt Norco could do something. Any thoughts on this? I never even considered slide rails. I wouldn't think they'd be very safe considering how heavy this case is. Once I get everything installed, I really don't think I'd need to get inside the case. That's the benefit of the hot-swap bays. At the moment, I plan on just having it on the floor (I have hard wood floors). I am looking at racks though, and something probably 15U, open (not like a cabinet) with caster wheels would be sufficient. With slide rails though, wouldn't that cause the rack to become forward heavy when you slide the case out? I suppose those would be more useful for people who have a rack installed in the house, and not be moveable, where it's bolted to studs or something. The fans I'm going to have to research. From what I've read, the fans installed are guaranteed to work with all 24 slots installed and keep the system cool. The noise is something else entirely. So I'm going to have to wait and see how loud these are when I go to install the current server bits in it. I still have to wait until Friday for the replacement screws from Norco to arrive before I can do anything. But I do know that if I'm going to replace the fans, I'm going to have to look at something that pulls at least the same amount of air, but be quieter. Thanks for the tips about the power supply. I never really considered the amperage draw. I guess I'm just an idiot that way. I always just figured if there was enough Watts, I could split it however many times I needed to get everything powered. Because of that, I actually have in my current case like 6 120mm fans (2 on top, one on the back, 2 on the side panel and 1 on the front) all running on one cable, then all the hard drives on another. I'm probably waiting for a blow up. Like I've heard all the lingo about +12 "rails", and my current PSU has 4 of them, but never really thought about what that meant, other than it would give more power than the +5 ones. I guess I probably should have thought it out more. So in my quest to find a new PSU for the server (since I'm putting the old one in my HTPC), I've found an interesting possibility. Corsair's HX750i provides the +12@62.5A (you said I just need 48). The Corsair AX760 though has more Watts (woo 10) and +12@63A (a .05 increase) and is cheaper. However, the HX750i has something called "Corsair Link" which I guess plugs into a USB port to provide direct access to the PSU for configuring (including an ability to switch to multi-rail mode). On the other hand, the AX760 is Haswell Certified (while looking at the item specs on NewEgg), while the HX750i is only Haswell Ready (again on the specs, but the HX750i also says this in it's details, while the AX760 does not...). My new motherboard/cpu combo will be Haswell so I figure this is important yes? So which should I get? I'm leaning more towards the HX750i the more I look at it. The price is a little higher, but still affordable, and the added features could be handy. The only fear I would have is the single rail, unless I'm just being paranoid. Corsair AX760 - NewEgg - Website Corsair HX750i - NewEgg - Website

I never upgraded to Windows 8, and am definitely staying away from Windows 10. It's a personal thing with me.. I gotta have my Media Center. Anyway, since I've not upgraded, I don't know what utilities Windows 10 (or 8) has available to test the hard drives. They've probably got something, like chkdsk. I would run that. Maybe you have a bad sector (or more) and when the computer is trying to read or write to it, that's when it fails. I had that problem once, and couldn't identify it. But after figuring out that the drive was failing with bad sectors, it went away after I replaced it.

New update! Received the case from FedEx today. I was really excited about it, until I got it upstairs in my room and unboxed it. I specifically asked the guy to pay extra special attention to protecting the front of the case so as to not have it be damaged in shipping. Opened the box up, and there were broken up bits of styrofoam "wall" padding around the sides (between the box and the side of the case, but not thicker than the rack mounting screw plate). He also packed a little bit of the styrofoam on the front of the case, but again, it wasn't thicker than the protruding rack mounting handles. The end result? The entire right side is bent, the USB housing is busted, and the plastic "rail" that hides the USB cabling was broken off (screw was still in the case, but the plastic "O" ring that it screws into was broken. I don't have a rack (yet) so I can't really test to see if the case will mount. It looks like it might if I have a long screw, but if the mounting screws are short, I don't think it will reach because of the bend. Also, I've not been able to test if the USB ports will work or not. To be honest, I'm not very concerned about them since the USB ports built on the back of the motherboard will be what I'd use most of the time anyway. I'm just kinda bummed it was damaged in shipping. I double checked the sale's pictures, and it was definitely not bent or anything like it is now. Photos (click to enlarge offsite) So anyway... I won't really be able to test anything with the case until I receive some cables. I ordered 2 direct cables from Monoprice since I only have 2 ports on the controller. Later down the road I'll buy 4 more once I get the SAS Expander. The cables haven't arrived yet, so I don't have any way to test the backplanes. I already know both ports on the controller work (tested them out with the forward breakout cables I am currently using). My plan is to run a cable to the first backplane, and connect 4 drives. If all 4 drives shows up, that's like 90% confirmation they work. Then I'll move the SAS cable down to the 2nd row, move all the drives down (or I might just go ahead and install all the drives) and test that one. Eventually I'll go through all 6 backplanes and verify they all work. Unfortunately, only time will tell if they're solid or not. I did take 2 of them out when I got the case though, and they look fine to me. I'm a little confused how the LED's work, since there's no plastic "tube" to connect the front of the drive bay to the LED's in the back. It looks like they just light up the whole bay. Guess I'll see how that works later. Another thing to note was the drive caddy's do NOT have the moveable vent blocker on the front. In fact, it looks like the area is closed up a bit more than what I've seen from other pictures. There's only a few holes. As for other areas... I really like the way they did the fan wall. I've seen some pictures where it looks like they have a PCB board, and the fans are connected one at a time to it, and then has a molex plug built into it that you would connect your power supply to. Mine is much more current looking. The fans sit inside a small box, with a little housing on the side to slide the power plug into. Each fan box has this on the same side. Each fan's box has a snap release to allow for easy removing. When you remove the fan, the power cable slides out of a pre-existing 3-pin "socket" that receives the fan's power plug. Each "socket" is wired internally inside a plastic housing (and I would assume is simply spliced together inside) then runs to the end of the row where 2 wires come out and feed into a male molex plug waiting for power. This design looks like it will cut down on space and allow better air flow. I like it! The only problem now is, finding replacement fans that are the same depth so as to still fit in those boxes! My next purchase on the list is a new power supply. I'm going to get something that is at least 80 plus Gold. I don't think I need redundant PSU's yet. This isn't a business server anyway. But I need the new power supply so I can swap it out with the current one in my server, so I can use the old server PSU for my HTPC since that one's crapping out on me. Once the new power supply arrives, I'll start saving up to get the basic entry level components for the main system. I'll have the old parts (mobo, cpu, ram) installed in the Norco case so I'm not down a server during the upgrades. Once I get the new mobo, low version cpu, and a little ram, I'll get all that working. The nice thing about upgrading means I can now use the new processor I just bought (Core2Duo E8400) in my HTPC to replace the Core2Duo E6400 that it's using! This train keeps rolling on!

I'm not sure what the DCP Watchdog violation error is. Are you sure the problem is with an HDD drive causing the crash? It might be software. But if it is hardware, maybe one of your backplanes is bad? I remember you said you got the Norco 4224 (that's what I just got today). If the backplane is the issue, Norco will replace them for you. It might be your power supply, where if you connect one drive it's fine but 2 drives might draw to much current and something crashes. Maybe one of your old drives is failing.. could be a number of things. Hope you figure it out! Take a look here: http://pc.net/helpcenter/answers/windows_8_dpc_watchdog_violation

Ok thanks for your advice! I think I will order from Monoprice. Their prices are better, and I already know their quality is top notch.

Thanks Chris! I've been waiting all day for you to reply lol. Doesn't look like anybody here spends much time helping others, just asking help. But that's ok as long as somebody eventually answers. That's great that you would be willing to send me your spare set of REVERSE breakout cables. I wonder what the big difference is (why regular won't work in reverse). Do you still have my address? As for the other cables, are you saying the Chinese ones would be good, or the ones on Monoprice? I don't have enough drives to fill the Norco case yet, but I do have 15 drives so I'll need to get something. Also, I really don't mind waiting and maybe buying a cable weekly. I just wanted to make sure I was ordering the right stuff. For the cost, the Chinese ones would be good, but for the quality I'm more tempted to go with the Monoprice. Amazon has some of the Monoprice cables (for $2 more) but also has a lot of 5 star reviews, so that really makes me think the Monoprice ones are the way to go.

Just to update... Pulled the trigger and ordered my Norco 4224 case. I got it off eBay for a good price. I've been in communications with the seller for about a week while I continued to save up for it. He was real nice at first, then kinda stopped replying. Don't now how to take that, but eBay's buyers guarantee is protecting me in case he cheats me. The story goes, his coworker GAVE him this case for him to use, but he ended up going a different route and not using it. I asked him if he knew if everything worked (backplanes, etc) and he told me he never actually used it and that it in fact has never BEEN used. So that's a plus I guess. However, he did tell me that it also doesn't come with any extra parts, so that means I have to find a way to get replacement drive caddie screws and motherboard mounting parts. I emailed Norco and was told that I can order them from there for a small fee. The seller said he was having his coworker look for the parts, but that was the last I heard from him, 3 days ago. I told him I would just buy them from Norco if they can't find them. Norco also said that they can replace the backplanes if it turns out they don't work. So I figured everything sounded good and just went ahead and ordered it. Should arrive no later than Wednesday according to eBay (the seller marked the shipping as free and expedited!). Now I need a bit of help. When got the IBM/LSI controller card, I bought 2 cables from Monoprice that split the SAS to 4xSata. I need to now buy some SAS to SAS cables for the backplanes, but I'm not sure which I need. I looked on Monoprice for "ssf-8087" and was presented with a lot of options. Looking over them, I think what I need is this, but I'm not sure. I'm going to need 6 of these eventually, and +$10 each seems a bit steep (but maybe that's just because I'm not used to buying these). Also, since I have these SAS to 4xSata, will they work on the backplanes too? Just plug 1 cable into a backplane and then the 4xSata into the motherboard or Sata controller? Sounds too easy, but the connections all look the same. In other news, my other "main" media center computer is dying on me. It has been for awhile but I never figured out what was causing it. I thought it was video card drivers or some new program I installed. Turns out, my power supply is flaking out. I'd come home from work some times and the computer would appear to be on, but there would be no video. I'd try to reboot and sometimes it would take 2-3 tries before it would load. Then the other night I was watching tv and I heard what sounded like rain. I hit the mute button and discovered the sound was coming from the power supply. It's doing this strange hissing, sizzling, electric static sounding noise. Starts out small and quite, then gets loud and continuous for about 10 seconds then shuts the whole system down. I've looked at it, and I don't see anything like sparks though. Trying to reboot after that takes anywhere from 20-30 minutes of constant power cycling because the motherboard isn't getting a good clean signal from the power supply. If the PSU isn't providing enough current, that would explain why my video card would suddenly drop it's signal too. So yeah, I'm going to have to replace that next before I do anything else. EDIT -> Would these cables be safe to get? I guess they're coming from Hong Kong, and I've heard that quality from China can be hit or miss. Would I be risking it if I were to go this route trying to cut costs? Like, "You get what you pay for". Just looking for some advice.

I stand corrected. Thanks

Strange... that's how it was named when I entered the folder... Actually, I have a few files with the .default on them. I renamed them all. Started re-measure again, nothing happened. Restarted Service, YAY IT WORKS!! I never recreated anything, so I don't know why they would be named with .default. But having that on there certainly made a difference.

Ah, that's a good idea about the USB for installer. Would really help in my case, where I actually don't have an optical drive installed (all the bays are used up for HDDs). Got any tutorials on how to build a bootable USB with the install DVD on it? Is it simply a matter of make the USB bootable, then extracting the files from the ISO to the root of the USB? Obviously you'd have to configure the BIOS to use it as a 1st boot device. Man I'm practically set on what I need. I just need money now lol.

I believe I'm using v2.1.1.561. Maybe it doesn't like my file name. I do have it using quotes though, let me try removing them. I just tried doing a re-measure again, and it's still not creating the file. I backed up to the StableBit folder and found that the DrivePool subfolder was read-only. I tried removing that attribute, and set the security of the folder to EVERYONE with Full Access. Still doesn't create the file. Just to verify, we're talking about this file correct? C:\Program Files\StableBit\DrivePool\DrivePool.Service.exe.default.config Is there a service I need to restart maybe to let the new config take effect? EDIT - Restarting the service didn't help either.

It's definitely not working. I went to the folder path C:\Program Files\StableBit\DrivePool\ and configured DP to create a file "DP_RUNNING" and then configured Light's Out to look in that specific path for that specific file, but it never works. I actually opened up the path and watched while I forced a Re-Measure but DP never created the file. I also had done this while DP was performing other stuff, like verifying duplication and balancing. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe I need to put quotes around the path since there is a space in it. Couldn't I alleviate all the problem and just have it create the file in the root of C:\? I'll have to experiment more with it later.

Yeah when I was looking for RAM, I was kinda surprised that the ECC doesn't have heat spreaders, even though they're supposed to be the cream of the crop so to speak. Does ECC just not get as hot? Granted, I'm not using the server for Gaming or high power video re-encoding, so I think for a media host it'll work just fine. Did you happen to see my question about the built in USB plug next to the SATA plugs? I've read it's typically used for OS. Does that mean it's for installing the OS, or should I get something like a 128gb jump drive and install the OS onto it and leave it plugged in? I'm just not sure what the point of that plug is. Especially if it's meant for having the OS installed to, when I already have a SSD drive for that.