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PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2019 10:47 am 
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Hi. Today my EX470 started up with all the drive bay lights showing a steady red. The Power and Network lights are blue and the Health light remains a steady purple. The Power and Reset buttons have no effect and the only way to power down the unit is to unplug it. I've taken all the drives out and checked the system drive on another computer, and this shows that it is readable and not corrupted. The server no longer shows up as attached to the router.

From what I have read elsewhere on the forum it looks like the unit has had some sort of hardware/BIOS failure. I'm not really interested in taking it apart and doing hardware upgrades - but is there anything else I should try before giving up on it?

Thanks.


Last edited by biterbit on Mon Jul 15, 2019 3:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2019 12:27 pm 
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The topic says a ex490 and in your post you state a ex470
Never had red drive leds on a ex490
I have never owned a 470.

But it sounds like it is in recovery mode.
Meaning you may need a recovery not reset.
Hope you have the cd.
I know you stated you checked the os drive but I would double check the os drive again, as well as the pool drives.
Also you stated you are not interested in opening the unit but another possibility is your bios battery may be dead.
Which means taking it apart to get to it on the motherboard.

Another thought is your connector software on the pc needs to be reinstalled.

Here is a reference to a ex470 Manual:
http://www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01276565.pdf

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PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2019 3:13 am 
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Thanks for your helpful response.

Firstly, apologies for the typo in the original subject line: I am talking about the EX470.

I had checked out the user manual and could not find any description of the combination of drive and status lights that I am seeing.

I put the drives back into the unit this morning and powered it up again. Again, all drive lights started and remained red, and the power and network lights were blue. I did notice, however, that the status light briefly flashed red then changed to purple. The purple light was on for about 12 seconds then went out. A few seconds later it repeated the same cycle: a flash of red, then solid purple, then off. I noticed though that the length of time it remained purple was reducing: from about 12 seconds at first to only 3-4 seconds after a few cycles.

This made me think that it might be going through some sort of boot-up process which was then failing earlier each time it cycled. That made me consider your comment about the BIOS battery. I looked at the disassembly guide and it was not as complex as I imagined it might be. So I followed that, changed the battery and reassembled it.

First thing I noticed was that reconnecting the power cable did not automatically boot the machine as it did before. I used the power button and it started up, as before, with all drive lights red and the status light going purple for 10-15 seconds. Then the status light went out and a few seconds later the unit switched off.

Now it will not start up. The only evidence of life is the light at the back where the network cable connects. Sometimes I hear the fans start up for a second then it powers off. I can get no other response from the unit - with or without the drives installed.

Is there anything else I can try to revive the unit?

Thanks in advance for any help.


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PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2019 10:42 am 
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Try booting with just the os drive inserted yes you will get errors but just test to see if it will boot and stay on.
As far as shutting off I know for a fact I tried on my ex490 to boot with just some connections to cables to the leds ect and it would not boot.
So you may need to reseat the backplane and double check all the cable connections , Since your took it apart.

But it is typical to have a psu go bad and not provide the proper power to all the components.
Which will have similar symptoms of shutting down before it completes the boot.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 13, 2019 9:30 am 
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Thanks for the advice. I took the unit apart again and reseated all the connections before reassembling it. This seemed to have an effect as the unit then started up but with disc errors. I logged in, and it indicated that a disc check was needed on drive D:. I scheduled a disc check on reboot and I left it running. A few hours later it had closed down (possibly because it was now in a 'lights-out' hibernation period). However, the success was short lived as this morning on startup, it returned to the previous state of disc lights all read, and a steady purple status light. In case the discs were the issue, I removed each one and ran a CHKDSK on each using another computer: no errors were reported.

After reading around the forum, I took the unit apart again and tried to do some checks on the power supply. I found the appropriate voltages (+5V, 12V and 3.3V) on the appropriate pins of the power connector when plugged in to the motherboard. However, I could not perform a test with the power connector disconnected: I just got +5V on pins 2 and 6. The fan on the PSU was not operating either so I tried shorting out pins 1 and 2 - but to no effect.

Now I'm not sure whether the PSU is the issue or whether it's fine and there's some other motherboard failure.

Is there any other way to test the PSU beyond checking the voltages at each connector pin? And is there a reason it does not start up after shorting pins one and two?

Thanks for any further guidance you can give.


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2019 3:06 pm 
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I still think it is a drive issue.
I don't care if chkdsk says all is fine.
It sounds like the unit is in recovery mode.
Meaning the os drive is missing files or data to boot from.
The connector software is not complete.

Did you try to boot with just the os drive?

If it were me I would pull all the drives.
Add a new drive in the os bay at the bottom and run reset.
Just to see.
And You really should have s.m.a.r.t. classic plugin to monitor your drives.
MS sucks in the console to check health of drives..

Also you can't just jumper the pins to boot unless you have all the cables and backplane and leds and fans connected.
There needs to be a load on it.

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biterbit
PostPosted: Mon Jul 15, 2019 3:18 am 
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Thanks for the reply Ruben.

I have tried all disc combinations: no discs, the OS disc alone, and all discs, but the power now only comes on for a few seconds before turning off. I hear the PSU fan start up then it dies. So I guess either the PSU has failed or something is wrong on the motherboard that is making it fail as soon as power is applied. As mentioned before, it appears that it is supplying the right voltages on each pin but perhaps it fails as soon as the motherboard draws power (even without any discs). However, since I can't seem to be able to make the PSU operate when disconnected from the motherboard I can't see how to isolate the fault any further.

Since I can't be certain that it is the PSU, I'm reluctant to spend money replacing it, so I think it may be the end of the unit's life. Since it was manufactured in 2008, I suppose that's not a bad run.


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 5:13 am 
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Are you willing to part from it? Shoot me a private message. Thanks.


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 9:13 am 
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I had one behave like that except it wouldn't even power up for a few seconds, it would just twitch momentarily and then power off, replacing the power supply fixed it. You can jumper across two pins to turn on the power supply, see this Wiki article: http://www.mediasmartserver.net/wiki/in ... wer_Supply

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:49 am 
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Thanks for the advice. I tried the pin-shorting test but got no response with the power connector unplugged. When plugged in the unit powered on as soon as it was connected to the mains (the power button had no effect).

I've looked at the cost of a new PSU and decided to buy a new NAS server instead, for about the same cost. A pity, but the risk of it not working even with a new PSU is too great.

I'm selling the unit for spares at the moment.

Thanks again for your response.


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 4:20 pm 
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Sorry to hear that.
I still use my ex490 for some functions
But I went with a readynas rn316.
That is a outdated model now.
But it is extremely fast.
And has several plugins that are comparable to the mediasmart server features.
Except for client backups which I used easeus todo for and it works better for win 10 clients.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 20, 2019 5:50 am 
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Thanks for the feedback. I'll give EaseUS ToDO a try.


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