From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Mar 16 18:02:26 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D074CD83 for ; Sun, 16 Mar 2014 18:02:26 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mario.brtsvcs.net (mario.brtsvcs.net [IPv6:2607:fc50:0:a400::2]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9E72023A for ; Sun, 16 Mar 2014 18:02:26 +0000 (UTC) Received: from chombo.houseloki.net (c-76-115-19-22.hsd1.or.comcast.net [76.115.19.22]) by mario.brtsvcs.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id AD8FC2C1622; Sun, 16 Mar 2014 11:02:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [IPv6:2601:7:880:bd0:3845:412c:bba2:a563] (unknown [IPv6:2601:7:880:bd0:3845:412c:bba2:a563]) by chombo.houseloki.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 784D6177; Sun, 16 Mar 2014 11:02:21 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <5325E71D.30800@bluerosetech.com> Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 11:02:05 -0700 From: Darren Pilgrim User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.3.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cruxpot Subject: Re: Another case of the vanishing disk References: <20140316130936.3f2d18e0@X220.alogt.com> <20140316134309.2edc258a@X220.alogt.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list Reply-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 18:02:26 -0000 On 3/15/2014 11:04 PM, cruxpot wrote: > Back in December, it was the power supply. That was a cheap Rosewill > 300W PSU. The new is a Corsair CX500 (500W). The system basically just > has an old SCSI card and 4 Green Barracuda 2TB disks and a low end > pci-e video card and pci-e gigabit NIC. How can the PSU be the problem > since I replaced it and it's more than adequate? How are the drives connected to the power supply? Are they all on the same rails or are they spread across mutliple sets of rails? Be aware that you may have shot yourself in the foot buying "green" drives. Drives not designed for use in NAS/RAID usually have firmware that expects the machine to sleep the disks and be tolerant of delayed responses. The drives get to be cheaper because the controller has more "offline" time to fix errors due to higher tolerance parts. In some cases (like certain WD disks), the drives eventually start dropping off the port because they're going into an offline error recovery mode and take too long to respond. On a regular desktop, the OS knows to wait because the drive was signalled into a sleep mode. That doesn't happen in a server and you really don't want it to happen in a server. I'm betting that even if you had each drive on its own +3.3v, +5v and +12v rails, a line-interactive UPS and a server-grade power supply, you'll still have dropouts.