[Discuss] Changing computer/motherboard

[Murray Strome]

Thanks,Brendan!
I had thought of that.  The potential problem with that is that I only 
have two PCI slots. When I first set up the NAS server, neither FreeNAS 
nor Free BSD supported my on-board Ehternet, so I had to use one of the 
slots for a different Ethernet card.  There have been a lot of updates 
since then, so I could try to see if the on-board one will now work OK. 
If so, that would be a good $50 solution for the time being.

At least it is working fine now with the one disk in an external 
enclosure connected to a USB port.

Murray

On 2016-05-20 09:02 AM, brendan wrote:
> I'd be tempted to just go with another SATA PCI card and ride the
> existing motherboard for as long as you can - i've seen motherboards
> lose their IDE/SATA controllers and keep going for years.
>
> On 16-05-19 08:21 PM, Murray Strome wrote:
>> My FreeNAS system is running on a computer with a Gigabyte  GA M51GM
>> motherboard. I have 5 Hard Drives.  I have been having some issues with
>> one drive, which now appeared to have failed.  It was connected to an
>> on-board SATA port.  It turns out that it is not the drive which is
>> faulty, but all of the on-board SATA ports. All the other drives are
>> connected to a 4 port SATA card on the PCI bus.  It does not matter
>> which on-board port I connect it to, it is no longer recognized.
>> Because the box is RAID Z2, the failure to connect to that disk has not
>> resulted in any loss of data.
>> I pulled the drive out of the computer and put in an external case which
>> I then connected to a USB port. After a few minutes, it was on-line and
>> working properly as part of the 5 disk array, so I know that the disk
>> itself is OK.
>>
>> I don't really want to have one of the disks on an external USB port.
>> Also, if the SATA ports have failed on the main board, I suspect that
>> other things will likely fail as well.
>> I have a few options, and am not sure what would be best.
>>
>> I have two other computers which I could use. The main boards for those
>> are:
>> ASUS M2N68 AM SE2
>> GForce 6100PM M2 V2.0
>>
>> Any idea which of these would be better? I have looked at the
>> specifications, but really cannot tell.
>>
>>
>> If I were to switch everything over to one of them, the big disadvantage
>> of both of these is that I would have a lot less RAM available.
>>
>>
>> Another option would to be to buy a new main board, with processor and
>> RAM, which would not be cheap.
>>
>>
>> I don't imagine that anything I do would just work if I did the change.
>> I am guessing that I would have to do a new install of FreeNAS (which is
>> currently on a USB pendrive). But would all my data be recognized if I
>> did that?
>>
>>
>> Thanks for any advice or suggestions.
>>
>> Murray
>>
>>