Hi Everyone,
I've got an EX470 that I've had for 5-6 years that has finally given up on me. The front panel LED's don't indicate anything is wrong. I got a debug cable for it and can tell from the POST that it see's all drives and the internal flash. Some times right after it tries to access the flash it reboots and returns to post, sometimes it begins to boot and you see a loading windows screen for a couple seconds and reloads and goes to post.

My question is this, is there some way to provide a copy of whatever is on the internal flash of the server on a USB thumb drive? I am working under the assumption that the only thing on the flash is a bootstrap for loading home server and the OS install is on the drives. Does anyone know the answer to that, and, if it's just a bootstrap where could I get a copy of the contents?

Thank you!

Well, reading more through the other threads the onboard flash is supposed to be for recovery. It most certainly has failed but it has nothing to do with why it keeps reloading. I was able to get it to attempt to boot off the primary drive one time. After pulling the BIOS battery and letting it sit for a bit, I put it back together, hit F11 to pull up the boot menu and chose the first drive. I was greeted with "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM"

Since I never got a software CD with this thing I assume that if the onboard flash/SMI wasn't hosed that would be what I use to run the suggested recovery accompanying the error message?

Try connecting the System Drive the one in the bottom bay to another computer and run a CHKDSK on the drive. It has 2 partitions on it the first is 20GB and named SYS for the System Partition which runs WHS and DATA which is part of the storage pool.

Best way to connect the drive to another computer is external using a USB-SATA Cable, USB External Enclosure or USB Docking Station. If the computer your using has an eSATA Port you can use eSATA vs USB to connect your drive.

Sometimes running a CHKDSK will correct the issues the drive has.

The onboard flash or SMI which is listed in the BIOS as a USB SMI or something to that effect is for booting your server into its recovery mode.

The actual recovery is performed with another computer referred to as a Client this can be done over the network or by directly connecting the network ports between the client and the server. Easiest way to put your server into its recovery mode it to back out the system drive turn the server on and when you see the health light blink Purple/Red then reseat the system drive and run the recovery software in a client.

From time to time you will find recovery disk sets available on eBay but they are model specific because of the hardware differences between the various MSS Models. The disks from and EX470 or EX475 will work with your server. There are two different versions floating around v1.x which was originally shipped with your server model and then the v3.x which was an update to bring the server software up to the point the newer MSS Server Models.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Most problems are (Drives) (Power Supply) (Needs to be cleaned) (Error logs have filled the system drive).
Notice Drives and power supply are listed first......
Goodluck

_________________
[X510 CPU/RAM/All 2 TB Red's] [X510 CPU/Sync'ed Backup/All 2 TB Hitachi's]
[X510 /2 in box]
[X710 LIAN LI DIY W2016E] Stablebit Drivepool [EX-503 LIAN LI 5-bay USB3 External]
Fear the Cloud

Thanks for the tip. Chkdsk found several crosslinked files and made repairs. After I put the drive back into the server it started up looked like it was going to load. Unfortunatley, a couple seconds after displaying the loading files splash screen it reloaded and went back into that reboot loop immediately after trying to access the system drive. I checked the drive again but no new errors. I also searched through the system directories with a fie recovery program. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. let me know if you have any other suggestions.

Thank you!

I see this issue happen when the BIOS is switched from AHCI to IDE or vise versa and the correct driver is not installed. Give that a check.

_________________
HP MediaSmart EX495 E8600 3.2Ghz CPU, 4GB ram, 8TB storage including 3TB drives in pool. WHS with Active Directory, WDS, Media Center Master, Logitech server. Office 2010 server with client add-ins.
Microsoft MVP - Windows Home Server.

Hey, that gets me to thinking.
I plan on running my 510's as long as I can, if I had to replace the bios battery, would it default to the correct settings, (say I didn't have the video and cable)?
If not, Then I might want to get in there and write down all the factory settings so I could put them back.
Granted I have only changed a couple of bios batteries in my days, but it could happen.
Anybody?

_________________
[X510 CPU/RAM/All 2 TB Red's] [X510 CPU/Sync'ed Backup/All 2 TB Hitachi's]
[X510 /2 in box]
[X710 LIAN LI DIY W2016E] Stablebit Drivepool [EX-503 LIAN LI 5-bay USB3 External]
Fear the Cloud

Thanks for all the help on this so far. I'm slowly chipping away at it.

First off, I had the model number wrong, such a dufus. I actually have an EX485. It turns out the Power supply was indeed the root cause of the failure. It was marginal and would only supply power to the system for less than a minute before the low voltage condition was detected and the system rebooted. I picked one up for $25 shipped off of ebay, installed it and it stays up and running but won't boot.

Doing the suggested chkdsk on the boot drive found and corrected some crosslinked files as well. Now I'm trying to resolve the corruption due to the dirty shutdown, or maybe endless reboots it was doing. At this point the file it is complaining about is /Windows/system32/config/system (system registry file). I verified it's not missing so it considers it to be corrupt.

Since I don't have the software recovery disks I'm kind of stuck now. I looked around on ebay but didn't see any for sale. I'm looking for discs for en EX485 v3.x. Does anyone have access to those discs that could post an .iso on google drive? I think I just need the recovery PC disc. I did find a copy of the .iso for an EX490 online. Would that work instead?

Is it possible to rename this thread and move it to the EX485 forum? Or should I just repost to that one?

Thank you!

You need the right disks because there is a different driver for the case lights and fan control for each hardware . If you use the wrong one you will get a Health Error in the Console.

_________________
HP MediaSmart EX495 E8600 3.2Ghz CPU, 4GB ram, 8TB storage including 3TB drives in pool. WHS with Active Directory, WDS, Media Center Master, Logitech server. Office 2010 server with client add-ins.
Microsoft MVP - Windows Home Server.

The other thing is recovery method used by HP between the different MSS and DV models.

The EX47x and EX48x can be recovered over the network or via direct connection to the Client because they use a modified WinPE often referred to as a USB SMI which is stored on the motherboard.

The LX19x, EX49x MSS and the DV X310 and X510 all use a modified version of TFTP and require a direct connection to the client.

All these models have different motherboards but the EX49x and X510 share the same motherboard.

Aside from the motherboard differences the EX47x, EX48x, EX49x and X510 have interchangeable components like the PSU, Case Components, backplanes, LED's, Heat Sink and the Motherboard/PSU Housing. Some of the X310 Components are interchangeable like the PSU and Backplane with the other servers but the LX19x is a unique ugly animal in a class by itself.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

After getting a copy of the correct recovery disc and some bios tweaking I am up and running again! Thank you so much for all of the advice and suggestions! This community rocks!