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All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple
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Author:  realserv [ Sun Feb 22, 2015 9:50 am ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

I have a similar problem.
I woke up to all red drive lights.
Did the normal reset, shutdown etc. no luck.
I read that it may be a ram problem so I installed a new stick. No Luck.
I took out the drives, attached them via usb to a computer and the system disc (0) was dead. when plugged in and attached to usb it would try to start but could not. so bad disc right?
I plugged in a new WD1002FAEX in the system drive and attempted a system recover but I got no change.
As soon as powered up it goes to all red drive lights blue power blue network and no health light after about 3-5 seconds the purple health light is illuminated. ( I try to press the tiny system recover button in the front but I get no response, plus there is never any blue/red flashing which is supposed to happen)
In this state the hard shutdown does not work. Only unplugging works.

I also tried booting with no drive in. And tried to see If I could see it on the network but I could not, either with drives or without drives.

I'm just confused as to why a system HDD crash would corrupt the tower itself?

Author:  briansliman [ Tue Apr 02, 2019 12:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

Bringing up a dead subject, but real quick, will the servers only handle up to 2TB drives? I want bigger...probably depends on the OS..I installed a Q9550S CPU

Author:  Ruben Rocha [ Tue Apr 02, 2019 2:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

whsv1 only supports up to 2TB drives for the pool data.
However you can try 3tb drives for backup drives.
Myself I have tried 4tb drives for backup drives but they went raw.

Author:  rbknox [ Tue Jan 19, 2021 11:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

Revisiting this, here in 2021! After recently recovering my system drive, and, using the off-line updates found elsewhere in this forum, I had completely restored my ex470 to its prior working state. It was short-lived as there was a power outage last night. I have a small ups which seems to have shut things down in time. However, upon starting things up this morning, I had the dreaded 4 red drive lights. And the health indicator started as purple (red/blue) but not flashing - always on. Until it wasn't - the health indicator disappeared completely. Despite several attempts with drives removed, the behavior is:
- from power on, either red/blue solid, eventually turning off all together, or no health light at all
- all 4 drive lights red
- no recognition of any device by my router
- power and network lights blue
- rear power button unresponsive (must pull plug to turn unit off)

Finally, while I'd like to blame the power outage/ups, I remember over the last few days, I had some issues getting the server to be recognized while restoring and doing updates. At one point, it started up with red drives, but fortunately disappeared on the next boot. Wondering if that was the beginning of the trouble.

At the start of the thread, moderator said he thought it was a corrupted or failed BIOS. Not sure how this happens after more than 13 years? Has anything been discovered since as to why this red drive/unhealthy health indicator happens? If it is a Bios issue, is it not possible to restore the bios or reset it in some way? That is, similar to if one is replacing the CPU?

Finally, because the health light changing from solid purple to turning off seemed perhaps like a loose connection, I disassembled the unit (per memory replacement procedure) and checked connectors etc. No luck. I even checked the voltages on the 20 pin motherboard connector - all within reasonable range 3.3, 5, and 12 V - so I don't think it is the power supply.

Is this the end? No fixes?

Author:  Ruben Rocha [ Wed Jan 20, 2021 2:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

I have never used the ex470 mine is a ex490 but they are all old unit's.

First I would check the cmos battery on the motherboard.
They cause strange havoc when they die.

Second I would pull the drives and connect them to the pc and run check disk.

Last but sounds not to be the cause is the PSU failed.
You can try a simple test by pulling all the drives but the os.
You will still get errors but it should boot if the drives are good and intact.
.

Author:  rbknox [ Wed Jan 20, 2021 5:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

Thanks Ruben.

Interesting you mention the CMOS battery. While I had the system apart I checked the battery and it was dead. I replaced with a new CR2032 3V with some faint hope of making a difference. It didn't. Also double checked the power supply voltages while powered up under load - all good. Per others, I don't think the state of the drive makes any difference at this point, as I don't get the normal startup sequence with all drives removed. And finally I substituted the original 0.5 GB RAM back in, just in case something went wrong with the 2 GB I had installed years ago.

It seems lioninstreet and moderator's dead project box had similar issues. In my case it is arguably worse since although I sometimes get the red/blue steady health light, it just as often doesn't come on at all at startup or stranger, it disappears after a minute or so. I even tried shorting the BIOS pins to see if I got activity but nothing.

Back to the CMOS battery, once it is replaced I guess there is nothing that can be done to reset things. Presumably the time will be lost, which shouldn't matter, though I've had some apps like iTunes behave strangely when timezone / time get out of whack. Seems unlikely it would mess with the BIOS.

Open to other ideas ....

Author:  Ruben Rocha [ Thu Jan 21, 2021 11:42 am ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

When you were testing did you check all the fans .

If the cpu gets to hot it will shut down or keep rebooting.

As far as the battery once it boots it will set the time. Nothing else needs to be done it will load the default bios settings.
Or it should.

And I would still suspect one or all the drives as faulty starting with the os drive.

Author:  Banquo73 [ Thu Jan 21, 2021 5:22 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

Another EX490 owner here, but your experience does seem rather similar to other posts about problems with the onboard usb flash which the EX47x has. When you mention shorting the BIOS pins, do you mean the USB data pins as outlined in this post?

Author:  rbknox [ Fri Jan 22, 2021 12:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

Banquo73 wrote:
Another EX490 owner here, but your experience does seem rather similar to other posts about problems with the onboard usb flash which the EX47x has. When you mention shorting the BIOS pins, do you mean the USB data pins as outlined in this post?


Yes, I went exploring the BIOS issues because Moderator, at beginning of this thread, had a spare box that seemed to exhibit similar startup - he had thought it looked like a corrupted BIOS. In fact though, my situation does not look like the conditions of those who have had bricked systems. There are however, 2 or 3 posts in this thread where they describe something very similar to what i am seeing - so seems it could be a common failure. The defining aspect is that there is never a red then blue flashing sequence. Nor does pressing the recessed switch on the front have any effect. I get all drives red (even when all removed) and the health light seems very hesitant, coming on purple (solid) or turning off completely, but no pattern. The power led is on and the network light is on if I have the cable connected.

I have been focused on the power supply. Initially I was convinced it was okay because I was getting all the right voltages, following the pinouts posted elsewhere on this site. But upon taking a closer look I have discovered that pin 8 (grey) Power OK is in a very low voltage state and unstable (a few mV to maybe .2 V alternating). Researching, I understand that Power OK or Power Good is provided by the power supply in a timed sequence once the power supply has reached operating voltages. In fact the CPU waits until there is a high (+5V) on this line before booting. So, this seemed interesting. Maybe the power supply is bad after all.

Not having another PSU around, I decided to cut the grey line to see what each side was showing. When I did this, strangely, the motherboard side was at 5V but the psu side was near 0. So then I tried connecting the standby +5V to the motherboard side, but it didn't change anything.

Not sure if anyone has had experience with pin 8. Seems it is definitely supposed to be at 5v and it definitely isn't during the normal startup.. Just seems coincidental that the one control pin on the connector is not behaving as it is supposed to - which might explain why they system doesn't boot.

Author:  rbknox [ Thu Jan 28, 2021 9:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

So, it has been an interesting week. To recap, after restoring my ex470, I had a power event, and my system exhibited the following:

- no boot, disks or no disks, health indicator purple (blue/red) but not flashing. Sometimes it even just turned off, that is, no health indicator light
- all drive lights steady red
- no response when engaging front recovery button
- no response when holding rear power button; needed to pull plug to turn off

Per the above discussions, although I explored the idea that I had a bricked system, these symptoms were not consistent with bricked users (I actually tried shorting the 2 pins on the BIOS chip with no luck). Also, while the power supply seemed to be functioning properly (supplying main 3.3, 5 and 12 V rails), the voltage on pin 8 was near 0 when it should be in the OK condition of +5V.

I looked around eBay and found another ex470 (maybe a MediaSmartServer member throwing in the towel!), advertised as used, but in working condition. So I bought it, figuring I could just re-install my disks into it and be back in business. Crazily, when the used model arrived, I was disappointed to find that it too exhibited similar startup characteristics, namely no boot, purple health light and red drive lights. But, there were a couple differences that offered hope: pressing the rear power button did shut things down, and, the purple health indicator was steady, always on - no intermittent behavior. That said, I could not get it to boot.

With few other options, I disassembled the eBay unit and checked the voltages on the PSU. Of key significance, it too had expected voltages and in addition, pin 8 was high (5V) as is supposed to be the case. With that encouragement, I swapped out the PSU on my own system and attached the PSU from the eBay unit. Amazingly, it started up with a normal power sequence: purple, then red blue flashing, and an alert on my network of a returning system. I quickly tried it again with my system drive and bingo - had a blue bar on drive 1.

In summary I now have a functioning system again. I had a few later problems when the recovery approach fell short, and I had to go to full reset. But I am now back up running with all my files intact.

From a logical/debugging perspective, it is clear that in my case, my power supply did partially fail. Reading on the Internet, it seems that pin 8 in the ATX standard is special in that it delivers a timed high signal to the motherboard and that the CPU waits to see that signal before booting. So it is likely that some of the other folks who experienced the hung purple light no boot condition might have had power supplies that failed in a similar way. The one puzzling aspect was that the eBay system that I acquired was in a similar state, even though it seems it had a fully functioning PSU. So there must be other things that can go wrong -- maybe on the motherboard that can cause similar results.

In conclusion, I am happy. But I do feel a bit lucky that the PSU from the used eBay unit fixed my system. Of course, I do realize that most people that might have gained insights here have probably moved on some time ago. So it goes.

Author:  Banquo73 [ Tue Feb 02, 2021 5:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

Glad you were able to get it up and running again by swapping out the PSU.

Thanks for sharing your solution, it will help others.

Author:  yooperdon [ Sun Nov 28, 2021 4:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

Moderator, not sure you are still looking at this thread. I have a 475 that was just refreshed with a factory load as it was having some issues. All appeared to be back to normal then I shut it down when I went away for Thanksgiving and when I started it about 7 days later, I now have 4 red drives at start and a purple status along with a high fan(s). I pulled all of the drives and have the same issue. Are there some other steps that I can try to get this server back up?

Thanks

Author:  Ruben Rocha [ Thu Dec 02, 2021 11:43 am ]
Post subject:  Re: All HDD red lights on, Server condition Red/purple

If you read the manual I gave you before.
http://www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01276565.pdf
It states a purple health means you have yet to connect a pc.
The red leds state the drive has failed.
Read up on the
Health indicator codes while using a paperclip after the uint boots not before.

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