About 2 weeks ago, my EX485 just went non-responsive. Could not log in, no nothing! At the time, I expected it might be a bad system drive, but when I put it into an eSata dock, I could read the files. I attempted a repair, but the process never finished without error. In order to save my data, I pulled the secondary drive from my raid 1 NAS and used it as a system disc and was able to get the system to a state where I could RDP in and rescue my files.

I put the system drive in another slot and restored to factory. Everything was going fine until today when I got home, a Robocopy /MIR was stalled because of the server was unresponsive. I could get an ICMP response, but nothing else. I hard booted and when it came up,

All 1 TB Seagate drives
System Disk Healthy
Disk Slot 2 - External ( <<<WHAT!!!?)
Disk Slot 3 - Missing
Disk Slot 4 - Healthy

I shut it down and popped the disks out and then reseated firmly back in and to my amazement, the entire system came up...all seemed normal and then when the Home Server Console locked up. I was able to RDP in and reboot and the discs all when back to the same condition as listed above.
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I wonder if the backplane has completely malfunctioned or maybe something else hardware related. I am getting all kinds of errors in the error logs indicating possible data corruption and db issues. Amazingly I can still get into all of my directories, but I don't trust the integrity of the files.

Fortunately, I have a X310 I got for a steal from NewEgg, on the way.

I guess I will just pull the drives and run a thorough test on each. Worse case, I will pilfer the RAM and good drives for my X310.