I've just built myself a NAS box using FreeNAS and i'm in the midst of 
testing reliability for myself to see if it's worthwhile in the longer term. 
I've built it using an old micro ATX board i've had lying around for years 
and a couple of old 20Gb hard drives.  I'm testing various configurations 
and services (raid levels, softraid, ftp, nft etc) to confirm it will be 
capable for what i want to use it for before i purchase some larger drives. 
It's looking very positive at the moment because i've managed to get it 
working so that i can stream films and music to my plasma TV and hifi 
system.  Even though it's an old board and network card, the bandwidth has 
been good enough even for HD content.

However i've been having problems with power management and i don't think 
its the software or OS that's the problem.  I have set ACPI to both s1 and 
s3 but i cannot get this box to power off completely when i press the main 
power button.  I've gone onto the board and checked the connectors to the 
front panel of the case and everything is correct as far as i can tell.  If 
it press "suspend" on the front when FreeBSD FreeNAS is loaded everything 
goes into suspend mode as expected and does not come out of suspend until i 
press a key as expected.  If i press the power button the FreeNAS will shut 
itself down as it should but when it comes to shutoff power the motherboard 
resets and everything reboots.  Even without an OS loaded pressing the power 
button will ONLY reset the machine.  The "reset" pins on the motherboard 
have not been connected.  Only "power off" and "suspend" are connected.

Needless to say i'm at a loss what to do next.  The only way i can power off 
this box is to hold down the power button for more that 4 secs or turn off 
at the supply.  It would be nice to utilise an old board for a NAS because i 
like to recycle old stuff wherever possible and put it to good use.  But 
because i'm very conscious of power usage i won't use it if i cannot auto 
power off  in the evenings and use the power on / suspend in ACPI to power 
up (WOL etc) when i need it.

On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 15:46:27 -0000
"M Jones" 
wrote:

> Needless to say i'm at a loss what to do next.  The only way i can
> power off this box is to hold down the power button for more that 4
> secs or turn off at the supply.  It would be nice to utilise an old
> board for a NAS because i like to recycle old stuff wherever possible
> and put it to good use.  But because i'm very conscious of power
> usage i won't use it if i cannot auto power off  in the evenings and
> use the power on / suspend in ACPI to power up (WOL etc) when i need
> it.
> 
Is it perhaps the "resume on power failure" setting in BIOS that's
causing the problem, maybe because there's a fault with the PSU's 5v
standby output?

"Rob Morley"  wrote in message 
news:20091104155617.6d75c368@bluemoon...
> On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 15:46:27 -0000
> "M Jones" 
> wrote:
>
>> Needless to say i'm at a loss what to do next.  The only way i can
>> power off this box is to hold down the power button for more that 4
>> secs or turn off at the supply.  It would be nice to utilise an old
>> board for a NAS because i like to recycle old stuff wherever possible
>> and put it to good use.  But because i'm very conscious of power
>> usage i won't use it if i cannot auto power off  in the evenings and
>> use the power on / suspend in ACPI to power up (WOL etc) when i need
>> it.
>>
> Is it perhaps the "resume on power failure" setting in BIOS that's
> causing the problem, maybe because there's a fault with the PSU's 5v
> standby output?
>

I will have a look into that and check it as as possibility.

I have told the BIOS not to resume on power failure.

"M Jones"  wrote 
in message news:9ZqdnWvZG9RMPGzXnZ2dnUVZ8jWdnZ2d@bt.com...
> I've just built myself a NAS box using FreeNAS and i'm in the midst of 
> testing reliability for myself to see if it's worthwhile in the longer 
> term. I've built it using an old micro ATX board i've had lying around for 
> years and a couple of old 20Gb hard drives.  I'm testing various 
> configurations and services (raid levels, softraid, ftp, nft etc) to 
> confirm it will be capable for what i want to use it for before i purchase 
> some larger drives. It's looking very positive at the moment because i've 
> managed to get it working so that i can stream films and music to my 
> plasma TV and hifi system.  Even though it's an old board and network 
> card, the bandwidth has been good enough even for HD content.
>
> However i've been having problems with power management and i don't think 
> its the software or OS that's the problem.  I have set ACPI to both s1 and 
> s3 but i cannot get this box to power off completely when i press the main 
> power button.  I've gone onto the board and checked the connectors to the 
> front panel of the case and everything is correct as far as i can tell. 
> If it press "suspend" on the front when FreeBSD FreeNAS is loaded 
> everything goes into suspend mode as expected and does not come out of 
> suspend until i press a key as expected.  If i press the power button the 
> FreeNAS will shut itself down as it should but when it comes to shutoff 
> power the motherboard resets and everything reboots.  Even without an OS 
> loaded pressing the power button will ONLY reset the machine.  The "reset" 
> pins on the motherboard have not been connected.  Only "power off" and 
> "suspend" are connected.
>
> Needless to say i'm at a loss what to do next.  The only way i can power 
> off this box is to hold down the power button for more that 4 secs or turn 
> off at the supply.  It would be nice to utilise an old board for a NAS 
> because i like to recycle old stuff wherever possible and put it to good 
> use.  But because i'm very conscious of power usage i won't use it if i 
> cannot auto power off  in the evenings and use the power on / suspend in 
> ACPI to power up (WOL etc) when i need it.
>
>
>

Would this be a similar problem to older boards displaying `it is now safe 
to turn off the pc` when used with xp?

"Jim E"  wrote in message 
news:mbKdnfQsUIVqd2zXnZ2dnUVZ7sKdnZ2d@brightview.co.uk...
>
> "M Jones"  
> wrote in message news:9ZqdnWvZG9RMPGzXnZ2dnUVZ8jWdnZ2d@bt.com...
>> I've just built myself a NAS box using FreeNAS and i'm in the midst of 
>> testing reliability for myself to see if it's worthwhile in the longer 
>> term. I've built it using an old micro ATX board i've had lying around 
>> for years and a couple of old 20Gb hard drives.  I'm testing various 
>> configurations and services (raid levels, softraid, ftp, nft etc) to 
>> confirm it will be capable for what i want to use it for before i 
>> purchase some larger drives. It's looking very positive at the moment 
>> because i've managed to get it working so that i can stream films and 
>> music to my plasma TV and hifi system.  Even though it's an old board and 
>> network card, the bandwidth has been good enough even for HD content.
>>
>> However i've been having problems with power management and i don't think 
>> its the software or OS that's the problem.  I have set ACPI to both s1 
>> and s3 but i cannot get this box to power off completely when i press the 
>> main power button.  I've gone onto the board and checked the connectors 
>> to the front panel of the case and everything is correct as far as i can 
>> tell. If it press "suspend" on the front when FreeBSD FreeNAS is loaded 
>> everything goes into suspend mode as expected and does not come out of 
>> suspend until i press a key as expected.  If i press the power button the 
>> FreeNAS will shut itself down as it should but when it comes to shutoff 
>> power the motherboard resets and everything reboots.  Even without an OS 
>> loaded pressing the power button will ONLY reset the machine.  The 
>> "reset" pins on the motherboard have not been connected.  Only "power 
>> off" and "suspend" are connected.
>>
>> Needless to say i'm at a loss what to do next.  The only way i can power 
>> off this box is to hold down the power button for more that 4 secs or 
>> turn off at the supply.  It would be nice to utilise an old board for a 
>> NAS because i like to recycle old stuff wherever possible and put it to 
>> good use.  But because i'm very conscious of power usage i won't use it 
>> if i cannot auto power off  in the evenings and use the power on / 
>> suspend in ACPI to power up (WOL etc) when i need it.
>>
>>
>>
>
> Would this be a similar problem to older boards displaying `it is now safe 
> to turn off the pc` when used with xp?
>
>
>

Had to go and look to get this right. If you think it is a similar type 
problem you fix it in xp by add new hardware and load up NT APM

add hardware
yes ive connected
scroll down to bottm and `add new hw device`
install manually
NT APM/Legacy support

The message 
from "M Jones"
 contains
these words:

> I've just built myself a NAS box using FreeNAS and i'm in the midst of 
> testing reliability for myself to see if it's worthwhile in the longer
> term. 
> I've built it using an old micro ATX board i've had lying around for years 
> and a couple of old 20Gb hard drives.  I'm testing various configurations 
> and services (raid levels, softraid, ftp, nft etc) to confirm it will be 
> capable for what i want to use it for before i purchase some larger drives. 
> It's looking very positive at the moment because i've managed to get it 
> working so that i can stream films and music to my plasma TV and hifi 
> system.  Even though it's an old board and network card, the bandwidth has 
> been good enough even for HD content.

> However i've been having problems with power management and i don't think 
> its the software or OS that's the problem.  I have set ACPI to both s1 and 
> s3 but i cannot get this box to power off completely when i press the main 
> power button.  I've gone onto the board and checked the connectors to the 
> front panel of the case and everything is correct as far as i can tell.  If 
> it press "suspend" on the front when FreeBSD FreeNAS is loaded everything 
> goes into suspend mode as expected and does not come out of suspend until i 
> press a key as expected.  If i press the power button the FreeNAS will shut 
> itself down as it should but when it comes to shutoff power the motherboard 
> resets and everything reboots.  Even without an OS loaded pressing the
> power 
> button will ONLY reset the machine.  The "reset" pins on the motherboard 
> have not been connected.  Only "power off" and "suspend" are connected.

> Needless to say i'm at a loss what to do next.  The only way i can
> power off 
> this box is to hold down the power button for more that 4 secs or turn off 
> at the supply.  It would be nice to utilise an old board for a NAS
> because i 
> like to recycle old stuff wherever possible and put it to good use.  But 
> because i'm very conscious of power usage i won't use it if i cannot auto 
> power off  in the evenings and use the power on / suspend in ACPI to power 
> up (WOL etc) when i need it.

 I've seen this sort of weirdness with E-Machines boxes in the past. I
haven't come across the infamous "Bestec PSU fries the MoBo" problem for
a few years, so I guess they've all earned their Darwin Awards by now
;-)

 Hint: Check you aren't using a Bestec PSU or a MoBo recovered from one
of those E-Machines PCs. In particular, check the 5VSB line, especially
whilst the PC is shutdown but still recieving power from the mains.

 Using "Tired Iron" for this sort of task is fine when you aren't
hankering for Gbit LAN speeds but no good when you try to upgrade to
Gbit by dropping a PCI Gbit ethernet adapter into the box. I discovered
this limitation when I tried such an upgrade on a supersocket7 based
FreeNAS setup (undervolted and underclocked K6/500 cpu) and landed up
using my spare SKT A MoBo (Jetway V600DAP) and an underclocked
undervolted Athlon XP2500+ CPU with a Netgear GA311 PCI NIC.

 I've since replaced the MoBo and CPU with a newer micro ATX AM2 socket
MoBo with built in Gbit ethernet and an LE1640 2.2GHz rated Semperon
running at 1.2GHz. Initially I had this clocked at a mere 800MHz (the
slowest I could set on the multiplier without reducing the FSB below its
200MHz DDR speed setting to avoid compromising throughput between the
HDD and the Gbit interfaces).

 Unfortunately, getting a decent throughput via the Gbit port seems to
require considerable CPU performance, hence the 50% boost on the
multiplier to raise the CPU clock to 1.2GHz Taking it right up to its
rated speed hardly improved the over the wire speed. The 1.2GHz clock
setting seems to provide the optimum trade off between performance and
power consumption.

 As things stand, I'm now seeing over the wire speeds of 36MB/s between
the FreeNAS box and my office PC (based on a V600DAP MoBo with an
XP2500+ cpu installed - the last major upgrade of some five and a half
years ago). I suspect the speed is being limited by my desktop PC
although I _have_ seen transfers which peaked just over 40MB/s a few
years back when connected to a customer's overspecced Prescot powered
box.

 I have four 1TB Samsung drives in my FreeNAS box (2 of them are now eco
green drives) and I run the server 24/7. I value my data too much to
even consider using spindown power saving. Also, I don't like the
penalty of a 10 to 15 second latency this can introduce when accessing
files (that, plus the fact that I want my drives to suffer the least
amount of thermal cycling induced stress).

 The whole server box consumption is a mere 53 watts as things stand (if
all four drives were eco green models, I'd expect this to sneak under
the 50 watt mark).

 Whilst it's true I could save as much as 25 quid a year on the electric
bill if I chose to use power saving spindown, I think that extra 25 quid
is a small price to pay for the extra reliability of and instant access
to my precious data.

 The only "Tired Iron" I'm using for my FreeNAS box is, quite literally,
the box. This is an old Gateway 2000 desktop case with its original 145
watt ATX PSU (modified to provide a 4 pin 12v CPU feed and the innards
of a 5.2v 1.2A smpsu wallwart to assist, via a blocking diode, the
rather feeble 100mA 5VSB line).

 The Gateway box is ideal for creating an almost silent 4 drive server
that can be sat on a height restricted shelf. It's nice and solid to
dampen the inevitable 120 or 90Hz hdd spindle vibration and its 145W PSU
is extremely quiet and efficient.

 The only downside is that the I/O shield area used custom cut outs for
the original MoBo rather than an I/O shield adapter plate. I've simply
hacked away just enough metal with tinsnips (covering the gaps with a
cardboard "I/O Shield", not so much for the cosmetic appeal, so much as
to avoid compromising the disk drive cooling performance (which, as it
now happens, is way more than sufficient).

 I suppose I could have hacked out all the metal to create the standard
letterbox shaped I/O shield plate hole. I doubt it would have involved
any more work than I put into the job over the course of fitting the 4
or 5 different boards I've tried in this box over the past 3 or 4 years.

 If the thought of having to modify the PSU puts you off considering the
use of such a case, don't worry, a modern standard mini ATX 250/270 watt
unit is almost a direct drop in replacement. The only modification
required being the case screw mounting hole locations - a trivial task
compared to the I/O shield mod. :)

 BTW, I've just taken a look at the status page of my FreeNAS box and,
FYI, I see it's just clocked an uptime of 70 days 4 hours and 49
minutes.

 That's rather modest compared to the 6 month uptimes I used to log when
my Netware 3.12 based server was sufficient for my data storage needs.
The uptimes could quite easily have been years except for my habit of
upgrading the disk drives about twice a year. I've no doubt the FreeNAS
box would prove to be just as capable if it weren't for my 2 or 3 times
a year capacity upgrade/tinkering sessions.

 Another heads up for you. In the past 14 years or so that I've been
running a file server box of one sort or another, I've never suffered a
drive failure (not even with the 5.25 inch full height ESDI hot and
noisy monsters I had in my very first Netware 2.15C server box). I've
used Seagates (in the early days, not for the past 5 or 6 years though)
and Western Digital and (my brand of choice) Samsung Spinpoint drives.

 I've never liked the later Maxtors (40GB and later) and don't think
I've ever used one in a server (though a suitably ventillated always on
server box would probably allow them to last just as long as their
cooler running brethren but I don't feel inclined to put this to the
test - it's just a suspicion I have).

 If you're going to be shopping for new drives, I'd recommend the eco
green versions of the Western Digital and Samsung drives in their 500GB
and above capacity ranges.

HTH

-- 
Regards, John.

 Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

In article , Johnny B Good
 writes

> If you're going to be shopping for new drives, I'd recommend the eco
>green versions of the Western Digital

Mmm.  I'm thinking of running 24 of the WD 2TB 5400rpm Green drives in a
RAID.  Waiting for feedback on whether they're reliable or not.

-- 
Mike Tomlinson

"Johnny B Good"  wrote in message 
news:31303030373730364AF23C0A53@plugzetnet.co.uk...
> The message 
> from "M Jones"
>  contains
> these words:
>
>
> Hint: Check you aren't using a Bestec PSU or a MoBo recovered from one
> of those E-Machines PCs. In particular, check the 5VSB line, especially
> whilst the PC is shutdown but still recieving power from the mains.

It is not a Bestec PSU.  I replaced the PSU last night to see if it was a 
possible problem but to no avail.  The damn thing will not shut off!

>
> Using "Tired Iron" for this sort of task is fine when you aren't
> hankering for Gbit LAN speeds but no good when you try to upgrade to
> Gbit by dropping a PCI Gbit ethernet adapter into the box. I discovered
> this limitation when I tried such an upgrade on a supersocket7 based
> FreeNAS setup (undervolted and underclocked K6/500 cpu) and landed up
> using my spare SKT A MoBo (Jetway V600DAP) and an underclocked
> undervolted Athlon XP2500+ CPU with a Netgear GA311 PCI NIC.
>

I am getting about 5 meg with this mobo and network card which after a 
little consideration sounds pretty good for how old the board is (8 years+). 
The CPU is 566Mhz and i have about 256Meg RAM.  I don't know how much the 
FSB is but i will have a look again.  It takes about 5-6 mins to transfer a 
film from my main box to the NAS.  This doesn't bother me because i wont be 
giving this thing masses of intense use anyway.  The only thing that 
bothered me was speed of hidef mkv files and such.  If i ever want more (i 
dont know under what circumstances yet) i will obviously have to replace 
mobo and everything.  The only thing that concerned me was the addition of 
sata or hardware raid to the board afterwards in relation to speed and 
compatibility etc.

>
> The whole server box consumption is a mere 53 watts as things stand (if
> all four drives were eco green models, I'd expect this to sneak under
> the 50 watt mark).
>
> Whilst it's true I could save as much as 25 quid a year on the electric
> bill if I chose to use power saving spindown, I think that extra 25 quid
> is a small price to pay for the extra reliability of and instant access
> to my precious data.
>

To be honest i didn't know how much i would be saving by shutting down, but 
i thought it unnecassary to have this thing running 24/7 so i was thinking i 
could power up at weekends and a couple of times in the week possibly and 
then have everything shut off to ACPI POS when it wasn't needed.  I have set 
drive spindown on these 20Gb test drives and latency is only about 5-10 secs 
when i access the box after a period of non use.  This will not bother me in 
the slightest.  I have to look into how to measure power consumption.  It 
would be nice to how "green" i am...

>
> If the thought of having to modify the PSU puts you off considering the
> use of such a case, don't worry, a modern standard mini ATX 250/270 watt
> unit is almost a direct drop in replacement. The only modification
> required being the case screw mounting hole locations - a trivial task
> compared to the I/O shield mod. :)
>

The existing PSU in the case i have is about 10 years old and I thought it 
would have been that.  I replaced it with a newer one i had lying around (i 
have other PSU's spare) and i get the same problem.

> Another heads up for you. In the past 14 years or so that I've been
> running a file server box of one sort or another, I've never suffered a
> drive failure (not even with the 5.25 inch full height ESDI hot and
> noisy monsters I had in my very first Netware 2.15C server box). I've
> used Seagates (in the early days, not for the past 5 or 6 years though)
> and Western Digital and (my brand of choice) Samsung Spinpoint drives.

I've never had a drive fail on me either.  But as the sizes go up and up in 
Tb i think it necassary to have mirror raid beacuse i dont fancy losing 
100's of films and 1000's of tracks / albums.

>
> I've never liked the later Maxtors (40GB and later) and don't think
> I've ever used one in a server (though a suitably ventillated always on
> server box would probably allow them to last just as long as their
> cooler running brethren but I don't feel inclined to put this to the
> test - it's just a suspicion I have).
>
> If you're going to be shopping for new drives, I'd recommend the eco
> green versions of the Western Digital and Samsung drives in their 500GB
> and above capacity ranges.

If all works out in the end i will go shopping around.  I will probably get 
WD but it all depends on price in the end.

I have to say the featues of this FreeNAS are great and i never thought 
before that building your own NAS was possible until i posted a couple of 
weeks ago to this NG.  I was going to get a Netgear but that idea is dead 
now after seeing this.  It all depends if i can get this board to work well. 
Even if it doesn't tho. i have been promised some other suitable "old iron" 
as a possible alternative from somebody else like me who hoards away too 
much stuff...

The message 
from "M Jones"  contains
these words:


> "Johnny B Good"  wrote in message 
> news:31303030373730364AF23C0A53@plugzetnet.co.uk...
> > The message 
> > from "M Jones"
> >  contains
> > these words:
> >
> >
> > Hint: Check you aren't using a Bestec PSU or a MoBo recovered from one
> > of those E-Machines PCs. In particular, check the 5VSB line, especially
> > whilst the PC is shutdown but still recieving power from the mains.

> It is not a Bestec PSU.  I replaced the PSU last night to see if it was a 
> possible problem but to no avail.  The damn thing will not shut off!

> >
> > Using "Tired Iron" for this sort of task is fine when you aren't
> > hankering for Gbit LAN speeds but no good when you try to upgrade to
> > Gbit by dropping a PCI Gbit ethernet adapter into the box. I discovered
> > this limitation when I tried such an upgrade on a supersocket7 based
> > FreeNAS setup (undervolted and underclocked K6/500 cpu) and landed up
> > using my spare SKT A MoBo (Jetway V600DAP) and an underclocked
> > undervolted Athlon XP2500+ CPU with a Netgear GA311 PCI NIC.
> >

> I am getting about 5 meg with this mobo and network card which after a 
> little consideration sounds pretty good for how old the board is (8 years+).

 It's unlikely to be the MoBo and CPU that's limiting the data transfer
speed but, more probably, those old 20GB drives. With 100Mbps ethernet
and 160GB or larger drives on a PCI Promise controller, I was seeing
speeds of about 6.8MB/s under a Debian OS based server setup (with a
win2k test setup, it was more like 8.2MB/s ;-) and this was with a much
older SuperSocket 7 MoBo and a K6/500 running at 250MHz (and 1.35v core
instead of the more usual 2.2volt setting).
 
> The CPU is 566Mhz and i have about 256Meg RAM.  I don't know how much the 
> FSB is but i will have a look again.  It takes about 5-6 mins to transfer a 
> film from my main box to the NAS.  This doesn't bother me because i wont be 
> giving this thing masses of intense use anyway.  The only thing that 
> bothered me was speed of hidef mkv files and such.  If i ever want more (i 
> dont know under what circumstances yet) i will obviously have to replace 
> mobo and everything.  The only thing that concerned me was the addition of 
> sata or hardware raid to the board afterwards in relation to speed and 
> compatibility etc.

 Well, that 5 or 6 minutes to transfer a file is almost meaningless
without knowing how big a file you're dealing with but my guess, going
by the '5 meg' figure you mentioned, would be a file of about 1.6GB in
size (perhaps an hour long TV program recorded from BBC1).

 In my case, with Gbit ethernet, that size of file could take as little
as 48 seconds to transfer (depends on whether or not the file suffered
fragmentation during its creation on the client box).

 If you're happy with the speed limitations of 100Mbps ethernet (in
practice, depending on the OS and driver software, anywhere from 6.8 to
10MB/s), you can drop a PCI HDD controller card into your current setup
to get the extra ports (IDE or SATA) to allow you to assemble a RAID.

 If you do, don't be tempted to use either the MoBo's or the RAID
adapter's own RAID facilty (which is typically simply firmware run by
the main CPU). Use the software raid function provided by the FreeNAS OS
itself. This is a much safer option than relying on proprietry firmware
algorithms built into the MoBo or controller card, both of which may not
match that used in a later replacement MoBo or controller.

> >
> > The whole server box consumption is a mere 53 watts as things stand (if
> > all four drives were eco green models, I'd expect this to sneak under
> > the 50 watt mark).
> >
> > Whilst it's true I could save as much as 25 quid a year on the electric
> > bill if I chose to use power saving spindown, I think that extra 25 quid
> > is a small price to pay for the extra reliability of and instant access
> > to my precious data.
> >

> To be honest i didn't know how much i would be saving by shutting down, but 
> i thought it unnecassary to have this thing running 24/7 so i was
> thinking i 
> could power up at weekends and a couple of times in the week possibly and 
> then have everything shut off to ACPI POS when it wasn't needed.  I
> have set 
> drive spindown on these 20Gb test drives and latency is only about
> 5-10 secs 
> when i access the box after a period of non use.  This will not bother
> me in 
> the slightest.  I have to look into how to measure power consumption.  It 
> would be nice to how "green" i am...

 For a modern 7200rpm drive, spindown power saving is around 6 to 7
watts per drive. With eco green drives, somewhere around the 4 or 5 watt
mark on a base consumption that's around 3 watts lower per spinning
drive. You can expect the power consumption for the rest of the box
(MoBo, CPU etc) and the losses in the PSU to account for anywhere from
25 watts up to 40 watts or so, depending on the actual technolgy used.

> >
> > If the thought of having to modify the PSU puts you off considering the
> > use of such a case, don't worry, a modern standard mini ATX 250/270 watt
> > unit is almost a direct drop in replacement. The only modification
> > required being the case screw mounting hole locations - a trivial task
> > compared to the I/O shield mod. :)
> >

> The existing PSU in the case i have is about 10 years old and I thought it 
> would have been that.  I replaced it with a newer one i had lying around (i 
> have other PSU's spare) and i get the same problem.

 Looks like you'll have to replace that MoBo then. I've got an old skt A
MoBo (an Abit - KG7) with 4 DDR dimm slots that I couldn't quite bring
myself to sling away upon which I stuck a label which reads:-

 "PS/2 KBD "Weirdness"           
 (ok after cmos cleared but not after 1st boot)
 USB KBD ok though"

 Meaning, it would be an ideal candidate for an always on server[1]. I
always like to take a positive view. ;-)

 Mind you, it does have one other oddity. You cannot populate the dimm
slots at random like you can in a normal board, you can only fill the
slots, working from slot 1 through to slot 4.

 Every single electrolytic cap looks abolutely pristine so it's my guess
that it's spent most of its time languishing in the 'Returns Bin' of
some computer parts supplier before it got to me.

> > Another heads up for you. In the past 14 years or so that I've been
> > running a file server box of one sort or another, I've never suffered a
> > drive failure (not even with the 5.25 inch full height ESDI hot and
> > noisy monsters I had in my very first Netware 2.15C server box). I've
> > used Seagates (in the early days, not for the past 5 or 6 years though)
> > and Western Digital and (my brand of choice) Samsung Spinpoint drives.

> I've never had a drive fail on me either.  But as the sizes go up and up in 
> Tb i think it necassary to have mirror raid beacuse i dont fancy losing 
> 100's of films and 1000's of tracks / albums.

 Unfortunately, I can't afford to waste capacity on the simpler RAID
schemes. Of course, my luck might eventually run out and I'll,
naturally, have second thoughts when that happens (_if_ it happens).

 One of the mitigating factors in 'keeping lucky' is the relatively high
'churn' rate. I doubt any one drive has ever spent more than a year in
the server before being retired to an external USB/E-sata box for yet
another year of occasional use.

 The working conditions in a well ventillated always powered up high
availability home server box must be the least stressful type of service
you can impose on a hard disk drive.

> >
> > I've never liked the later Maxtors (40GB and later) and don't think
> > I've ever used one in a server (though a suitably ventillated always on
> > server box would probably allow them to last just as long as their
> > cooler running brethren but I don't feel inclined to put this to the
> > test - it's just a suspicion I have).
> >
> > If you're going to be shopping for new drives, I'd recommend the eco
> > green versions of the Western Digital and Samsung drives in their 500GB
> > and above capacity ranges.

> If all works out in the end i will go shopping around.  I will probably get 
> WD but it all depends on price in the end.

 That and, if you're considering a model at it's best bang per buck
price point, its reliability figures (meaning it's old enough for
meaningful figures to have emerged when you google the term "WD 2TB, the
new Deathstar?" or some such phrase ;-)

 If you can, try and avoid buying the best bang per buck models just
prior to them suddenly dropping in price by 30% or so.

> I have to say the featues of this FreeNAS are great and i never thought 
> before that building your own NAS was possible until i posted a couple of 
> weeks ago to this NG.  I was going to get a Netgear but that idea is dead 
> now after seeing this.  It all depends if i can get this board to work
> well. 
> Even if it doesn't tho. i have been promised some other suitable "old iron" 
> as a possible alternative from somebody else like me who hoards away too 
> much stuff...

 You might be lucky, but even buying a brand new MoBo and entry level
CPU and a couple of 1GB sticks of DDR2 should set you back less than a
hundred quid these days so it's not difficult to build your own for less
than half the price of a commercially built one. Quite often, the result
will match or even outperform a ready built unit.

 However, as you're already doing, you can build a NAS box for next to
nothing and gain valuable experience before investing any real money on
building a unit to match those 500 quid boxes.

[1] Actually, meaning "Nice idea, but there's no chance in Hell that
that's _ever_ going to happen... Mmn, those caps look rather
scrumptious, I'm having those!" ;-)

-- 
Regards, John.

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