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Date:      Wed, 2 Oct 2002 13:37:29 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Danny Pansters <dannypansters@yahoo.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Quite OT, problems with AOpen DX34 Plus motherboard and disks being trashed
Message-ID:  <20021002203729.67307.qmail@web40511.mail.yahoo.com>

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I thought, since I run FreeBSD on this particular
server box, I might try posting here also. Sorry about
length of post but it still doesn't have all info I
could deliver as it is. 

As posted on motherboard.org forum:
------

Hi. I could really use some advice here.

The mobo has two PIII-800s, onboard Adaptec scsi
controller, Via chipset. Was using 2 identical Seagate
Barracuda 18 GB disks with software RAID1. OS: FreeBSD
4.6. When referring to "first" disk: this is the one I
boot the OS off. Now to the horror story...

After approx. 1.5 years of running virtually 24/7 my
first SCSI disk got read and write errors, and upon
rescanning it would have disappeared from the chain.
Upon rebooting the same would re-occur after non-equal
but overall increasingly shorter periods. In the end:
hours. Occasionally the drive wouldn't be seen by SCSI
BIOS at all. The other one (at the same chain) would.

First thought: drive is dying. However when using
Seagate's diagnostic boot disk the drive would either
not show up, or it would and if it did it passed all
tests.

Second thought: try other disk anyway. Because I want
to keep working with a mirrored configuration I got
two new identical disks, ATA this time (WD, 20GB)
with a new and short ATA100 cable. Dumped my data and
OS from the second SCSI drive and recreated
configuration. Incidentally, once I had everything
running, I could mount the other (supposedly faulty)
SCSI disk and read/write just fine. Within days
though, the second ATA disk started to show the same
problems as my former first SCSI disk did earlier.
Again upon rebooting it would work again but not very
long. Incidentally clicking noises. Not good!

Third thought: bad power supply. From what I've read,
opinions on this vary, but I came across enough posts
in mailing lists archives (FreeBSD's and some others)
indicating that a bad supply can do a lot of damage.
So I got me top knotch Antec power supply and tossed
the old one out. Connected system fan to it and
things seemed fine. At least the box was a lot less
noisy (the power supply itself has not one but two
fans also of itself effectively pushing the warm air
out of the server enclosure plus it can regulate
system fan speed when needed). However, within a day
or two my system logs again showed read errors. And
more ticking and clicking. Outch.

Fourth thought: check temperature, voltages, airflow,
etc. Actually, I ahve been looking at operational
variables like these all along. With the new power 
supply, mobo temp would go to some 35 degrees celcius,
with the old one up to 39. Not too much. As for
voltages, well, they looked normal, except that the
-12V would always be close to -17. I am not sure if
this is wrong, AFAIK it has always been like that. It
certainly didn't change when I replaced the power
supply. Also, none of the disks ever appeared to
become very warm.

Fifth thought, perhaps getting more far fetched: for
some reason, the offending disk always seemed to be
the one physically located at the bottom of the 5.25" 
cage. I probably need to explain what this thing looks
like: The cage can be taken out of the server
enclosure wholly, it holds the CDROM, and one can
screw up to five 3.5" devices around it. The most
logical place to start is using the positions under
the CDROM drive and to make them fit one has to use
the metal (I think copper) "strips" on both sides
screwed into the harddisks and into the cage. These
came with the machine and were indeed used to hold the
harddisks. Other places to put additional disks are on
top and on both sides of the cage forming kind of a
cube altogether. Yes, I have made VERY sure that the
disk at the bottom is not touching another disk,
neither does it touch the underside of the cage or the
enclosure. The things is, a ticking ATA disk is often
caused by too low voltage which wears it out quickly,
as far as I've understood. 

Could I be having some problem with grounding? And
where then, how could this have suddenly started? 
Otherwise, well, I can't think of anything else than
to replace the mobo. Can a damaged mobo lead to
problems as described above? It would have to happen
somewhere "upstream" from the ATA/SCSI controllers
then.

In short, I'm really stumped on this! Last time I
tried to power up the damn thing all it did was click,
it didn't even get to post, let alone boot :( I'm very
reluctant to keep on trying and testing because in the
meantime chances are my disks will deteriorate further
(I suspect the ATA drive is already toast).

Any ideas, recommendations, experiences that might
help me??

Thanks a ton for even reading this long post.

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