There is a utility that can read the actual BSOD dump file which can help pin point the reason for the actual crash. Its been so long since I used it I have to do some digging to find it.

The RAM could cause the issue you describe. If the boot issue still exists when you get home then reboot enter the BIOS, check the RAM, date and time and other settings to make certain things look good then save the settings even if you did not change anything and see if your server will boot. I would be prepared to change the RAM as I have seen my fair share of wierd issues with RAM but I would also be curious what the crash dump file has in it for when your server BSOD'd.

_________________
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

Thanks. I found some info on reading the BSOD dump file. Of course though it appears I need to actually get Shawshank to boot up in order to read the file.

I will definitely pick up some RAM on my way home, see if I can get to the bottom of what is going on here

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Question on RAM. Shawshank currently has CORSAIR XMS2 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800

Looking at retail stores around me I can find 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2-6400) Ram but none that specifically says SDRAM. Is it safe to get this RAM (example being something like this) or should I play it safe and just order SDRAM online?

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

UPDATE:

Regarding possible RAM/PSU issues:

- I have a spare HTPC that I can just grab the RAM out of there and test with SHawshank, so no need to buy new RAM
- PSU - going to disconnect a few drives and see if WHS starts. If so that should point to a PSU issue. I also have a spare psu that I can plug into some of the drives to take the load off Shawshanks PSU. Hopefully this will help phish out a PSU issue (thanks for the tip Alex).

Will report back tonight...

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

From my experience, more commonly WHS will just freeze rather than BSOD when a bad drive is encountered. It quite likely is a RAM issue so that's good to test as you mention in your later posts.

Also, if you use the spare PSU you to power some of your drives, you'll need to jump-start it since it won't be switched by the case or mobo: http://www.overclock.net/faqs/96712-how ... y-psu.html

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

RAM is basically the same although Microcenter and Newegg have the specs abit differently. Seems you already ruled this out so now its off to see if the PSU is causing the issue. I look forward to seeing what you come up with and hope you find a solution to the problem at hand. I know how frustrating these things are. Good Luck......

_________________
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

OK, so it just keeps getting stranger, but here is where I stand:

Came home last night, powered on Shawshank, and it turned on with zero issues. A message box did appear stating that it have recovered from a serious issue and a dump file was generated. I located the dump file, just need to look at it (wife worked yesterday so my time was short having to do the whole father thing!). I was able to add two more hard drives and copy over data without issue, so we got a bit of a head scratcher!

One thing that I did notice, when Shawshank booted up one of my drives showed with 0% health in HDD Sentinel. In WHS the drive showed healthy, and after a few minutes the drive in question showed as 100% healthy in HDD Sentinel. If I do recall I had the same issue with this drive a few days ago, showed as 0% health and then a few minutes later showed as 100% health. So here is what I am thinking:

- Either there is an issue with the drive itself spinning up at times (drive is only 5 days old)
- Hardware issue somewhere else (maybe line from PSU to this drive, sata controller card port to this drive, etc...)

I will just closely monitor. I can move this drive to another tray which may help isolate the issue. I can also pull out this drive and run some SMART tests on it, but will have to wait a little bit longer to get all my data copied over and duplication turned on. I will also run some tests on the memory to verify everything there is ok.

Here are some other observations to date:

- One of the Seagate 2TB HDDs shows up as around 25% health with 80+ bad sectors. I already knew this as prior to Shawshank's crash it had been slowly deteriorating. I was able to successfully copy all data off this drive and I did not re add this drive to the pool, going to start the RMA process
- One of the WD Green 2TB drives when I connect it to my PC tells me it is corrupt. I just put this drive to the side for now, but will run some SMART tests. This drive could be the culprit combined with issues from one or two other drives that caused the crash
- I still have two remaining drives that I need to connect to my PC and transfer data over. I will know then if either of those drives are bad (with the idea that possible multiple bad drives at once is what led to the crash)

I should hopefully be done transferring all data over by tomorrow, it is going much quicker now since with each drive I add most of the data is duplicated data and doesn't need to be transferred over.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Have you looked at the fans on the CPU and PSU to see if they are functioning properly. As you know heat is the enemy and a fan which is failing will cause lots of issues. I have seen fans that appear to run normally one min then not the next and I am not refering to fans which are requlated by the computer itself. If I am correct then the problems you are experiencing may increase in their frequency because of excessive heat generation. This would explain why you were unable to boot the server and then after leaving it down for a period of time it would boot.

So if you experience this issue again open up your server and observe the CPU Fan and check the air flow through the PSU and check the PSU for excessive heat.

_________________
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

From what I have seen (at least just the CPU fan) it is running without issue. Actually yesterday morning I think WHS would have booted up had I just waited a minute more (I was rushing to leave for work, so when I saw the black screen I just assumed it was down again). When I got home last night it took a while in the black screen before WHS loaded. Prior to that Shawshank had been running for 5 days straight without issue

I have been monitoring my drive temps and those have been within reason. I will definitely take a look at the PSU fan. I also still need to look at those dump files.

Just turned on duplication so the rebalancing process is going on. Hopefully by the time I get home tonight that will be done and I can start to move on

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Hows your progress going? Short of sending in $5 to receive a touch from God for your server (Hey I live in the Bible Belt) I have been hopeful you have resolved the issue or are close to it.

_________________
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

Looks like the ship has been righted...

All data has been copied over. I have one WD drive that is toast so I just RMD'd and one Seagate drive that I running a long diagnostic on (I was able to pull all data off but there are a lot of bad sectors). I have 24.5TB worth of HDD space back in Shawshank and enabled duplication yesterday so WHS is still in the process of completing (5.1TB duplicated out of 8.8TB so far).

Otherwise no meltdowns as of yet. I still plan on buying new RAM to be on the safe side, but will hold off buying a new PSU unless I encounter more issues after the new RAM is installed.

One thing of interest to note. Out of all my drives only one was bad that I couldn't get data off of. Based on this and with duplication it should mean that I lost zero of my data. A large majority of my data is videos and out of all the files (2500+) it appears I lost just one. Not sure what happened there but I am happy with the success rate.

This has been an interesting process to say the least lol

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Thats good to hear and just in time for the weekend although you may find yourself glued to the server anxiously reading the logs just to make certain everything is working as it should but I do hope your able to take a break from it. Last week I got all my servers settled down and tip toe by them even though for the most part I do not run into very many issues which are easily resolved but there are those which pop up which can drive you crazy. This weekend I will resume ripping my TV Series Disk Sets and spend time looking good pricing on WD Black Drives for my new server.

If you have not yet installed Alexes updated Remote Notification you should put it on he did a real nice job with it. I am debating if I should try the Android part but I was always pleased with the SMS and Email functions.

_________________
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

Just replaced the RAM with the Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 Desktop Memory Model KHX8500D2K2/4G. Overdue anyhow since I have a feeling some of the instabilities i was encountering with Shawshank was due to the RAM.

Question for the folks here, does anyone know if the Supermicro SASLP-MV8 supports hardware RAID? On Supermicro's site is says software RAID only. Someone I have been talking to asked and I wasn't 100% sure (I said no based on Super's site)

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Hardware RAID Cards are expensive and cost more than what some pay for their initial builds.

_________________
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