BrianAz

I'm following this thread closely. I've also got nanoboot with 5.0-4482. I very much would like to move to the XPEnoboot option but am not sure if it's as simple as downloading it to my USB and clicking upgrade on boot. I don't have a whole lot of important things on the array so I may just give it a shot. Though the mention of notifications not working does worry me a bit. Mine is a physical machine though. It overheats when I rsync large files so I think the fan/heatsink is dying and needs replacing. Once that's done I'll see if I can find time to upgrade to XPEnoboot.

No, I started with 6x 3TB and DSM 5.0-4528 Update 2.I haven't read of serious problems to expand in this release. ... There seem to be much more problems in 5.1 with expand and repair! Thanks for the info. From what I have read, I think I will stay at 5.0-4528 and try to expand my raid 6 in a few weeks when I get my next drive. I will update this post with results to confirm for others as I've not found anyone who has posted confirming raid 6 expansion by adding a new drive is working in 5.0-4528.

I currently have a 4x2TB RAID 6 array on DSM 5.0-4528. Are you saying above that you were able to successfully expand your array with this DSM version (or I guess you're running update 2)? I don't have my 5th disk yet, but am trying to figure out if I should expect any issues expanding to a 5x2TB RAID 6 array. Thx

I run ESXi on a small Shuttle box, so I've not had an opportunity to do much passthrough but my understanding is that you must passthrough at the controller level. So if you passed your onboard SATA ports, you'd pass ALL of them (unless you have multiple onboard SATA controllers I guess). I have a similar setup to Diverge with WMC running under ESXi. Presently, it's recording to a local 2TB disk but I'm setting up a XPEnology machine to move my recording to it via iSCSI. If that goes well, I'll then look to see if I can figure out a stable way to present more than 2TB to WMC for recording. Just moved up to 7 tuners and I'll have the storage available under XPEnology, so why not? Don't know how I'll do it yet. I guess my options are to present multiple 2TB LUNs to ESXi, turn them into virtual disks and then span them within the windows VM. Or I suppose I could use the built-in MS iSCSI initiator in W7 to use a larger LUN directly. Not sure how stable either option would be.

I just finally got around to updating mine and had the same exact warning on my first boot.. rebooting now... i hope my volume comes back. worst case I'd need to redo everything from a backup. For a few minutes I thought they were gone on 2nd reboot, but it seems it hung on the reboot and was still stuck in previous state. had to force a reboot from esxi VM console and saw my volume soon as it booted.. hope it stays that way Good luck. Please let me know if it doesn't . Thx

I cannot say for sure what will happen but I think it will work the same. I found this post earlier though which seems to support that it is simply any Gigabyte motherboard with the DualBios feature.http://xpenology.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=519#p3546

This is interesting. If I'm not mistaken, I think my Volume 1 and Volume 2 changed places. I didn't do anything to make this happen. I wonder if the bios checksum resets had something to do with it.... Everything appears OK so far. Edit: Yep, look @ this post. Labeled the same, but reversed in the GUI. Everything OK still. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3806&start=10#p23090

Ok. Did the following test: Scheduled Shutdown, Scheduled Startup three times in a row with no intervention needed. The "workaround" of the motherboard identifying the checksum error and automatically reverting to last known good... then booting a second time without error into XPEnology, worked each time without issue. The time until the system is ready is obviously slightly longer than usual as it is booting twice each time. See schedule and corresponding log entries below: Note: Each time the XPEnology came online for a 90 seconds or so, I clicked around and "used" the device until it shutdown with the next scheduled shutdown. I did not touch any of the scheduled Startup/Shutdown tasks once I began the test. Mostly clicked around the file manager. Everything was fine. 23:33 - Shutdown 23:36 - Startup (1) - XPEnology log @ 23:37:25 23:39 - Shutdown 23:42 - Startup (2) - XPEnology log @ 23:43:25 23:45 - Shutdown 23:48 - Startup (3) - XPEnology log @ 23:49:25 Log before test: Scheduled Startup/Shutdown tasks: Log after test:

3TB drive working great! Here are some captures showing the storage stats and volume: And of the network monitor while I'm filling the 3TB up: Will update when drive is loaded.

In double checking my BIOS settings, I discovered a SATA port was set to IDE. Changing it to AHCI fixed things right away. So now, using the 3 TB drive I can fully reboot from the DSM GUI back into XPEnology. No more popping the drive out mid-boot to get things up and running again. This is all perplexing to me as I was not expecting 3TB drives to work on this motherboard. I don't recall ever flashing the firmware with anything special, though this board is 6 years old or so. Who knows? I don't feel comfortable saying this is working on an untouched F12 bios direct from Gigabyte. It is working great though! I am filling up the entire 3TB. Once that's done, I will run through a couple additional scheduled power-on tests for liukuohao and then I will move the 3TB disk to the other SATA controller and see what happens. I forget which is which at the moment, but I've got my 2 disks split on the two controllers, so I know they both work to some degree.

Hello liukuohao. When I made the video, I did the full test 2-3 times with no issue. As mentioned, I have moved on to trying 3TB drives on this motherboard w/ XPEnology. At present, there is an issue where I am not able to boot with the 3TB drive connected. So I am unable to perform your requested test again. Buy this motherboard at your own risk. It works very well for my purposes so far but there may be variables that have not been discussed in this thread which may change the behavior for you. As an example, I know there is a revision 1.0 and 1.1 of this motherboard. I do not know what the difference is or what it means. Or perhaps you use iSCSI? I haven't tested that yet... It looks like this motherboard may be for sale for ~$15 USD on ebay, so I don't think it's that much money to risk . Enjoy.

Well...well...well...BrainAz, you have done it again, uploading your video recording on youtube to show you that your Gigabyte Dual Bios Motherboard is really the cure for the infamous bios resetting problem. Can I buy you a jug of beer to celebrate your success? LOL Unless, someone out in the forum can counter prove your evidence, I am going to hunt down a old gigabyte motherboard with Dual Bios feature! Thank you for sharing! No problem. Good luck!

I had some time to take a video of the boot behavior of the GA-EP45-UD3R today. I have posted to youtube with notations (be sure to enable to follow what is happening in video). It appears the "Dual-BIOS"/Backup BIOS feature of this motherboard allows the use of the power-on schedule feature without manual intervention. While I would say it's certainly not an ideal situation, the automatic backup bios recovery/reboot process is a viable workaround. I'm moving on with this motherboard now to test 2TB+ support. I've located a custom bios which is supposed to provide this ability. Will report back if this works. I have a drive on the way now.

Hmmm.. I had read some less than stellar reviews of Synology's Surveillance Station long ago. Sounds like I'll have to give it a try.

I use this http://blueirissoftware.com/. It runs on a Windows VM and uses my DS414 for storage via iSCSI. Once I get comfortable with XPEnology, I intend to migrate the iSCSI to it for my cameras.

I have a DS414 which I love and just threw XPEnology on an old computer to play with it. I must admit, it is pretty nice! Be sure to fully research every specific feature you use or may use w/ your Synology units & DSM. They may present problems in XPEnology. For instance, there is an issue right now where if you want to schedule your NAS to power-on at a certain time, it attempts to write to the bios which causes it to revert to defaults after boot since you don't have a Synology bios. I leave my NAS on 24x7 so this doesn't bother me, but it may be a concern to others. If you're just using it for simple always-on storage at home, then I think you'll be happy. You may want to install it virtually if you have that option.

OK, here's my update... I scheduled a power-off, followed by a power-on a few minutes later. Upon doing this, DSM automatically created two scheduled tasks: I sat back and waited.... At 11:46, DSM shut the system down as expected. At 11:50, the machine powered on. I heard one beep, which is normal.... but then a short bit later, I heard a second beep. I thought for sure it would hang, BUT after that second beep... it booted fine and DSM is running. Showing uptime after power-on: Logs showing power-off, power-on: So... things seem to work, but with one big caveat. Prior to setting the power-on option, when I would tell DSM to reboot, I would only hear a single boot when the machine posted. Now, I hear two beeps separated by 6-10 seconds. SO, I think there is some impact but my motherboard seems to be auto-recovering from it?? Unfortunately I moved my machine away from a monitor at the moment so I don't know what exactly is causing the two beeps. I have a feeling it might be telling me something is bad with my bios and us reverting to a prior version. This is pure speculation though at this point, but I think the motherboard is using it's "dual-bios" capability to workaround the problem of the bios being impacted when setting the power-on schedule. I will see if I can move a monitor in here later today or tomorrow to confirm my suspicions. Here is a link to the Dual-Bios info from Gigabyte's site : http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/55/tech_081226_dualbios.htm They also have an awesome cartoon if you like : http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/55/tech_081226_dualbios_flash.htm Also see this post: http://xpenology.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=960&start=10#p4777

I downloaded from Synology and ran the sed and mv commands before installing. My volume is likewise running fine right now. I only rebooted once when it came back up and told me there were no volumes. Some folks I've read said their volumes came back after 2-3 reboots. No idea if that would have fixed my issue or not.

Correct, I hit restart in DSM and it reboots and comes back to DSM without my help. No bios issues are preventing normal boot or reboot. I will try the power scheduling this evening.

Correct!, warning...warning...don't get your hope to HIGH yet, . Test this first, before buying more hard disk to use on the other 6 yellow + 2 purple SATA II ports which is available on this motherboard. Unless, you have spare cash lying around to spend. Just to confirm... normal boot from off works just fine. Clicking restart in DSM works fine. From what I've read, the bios issue appears to only impact users when they set their NAS to power on at a certain time, right? I went looking for the ability to schedule a task to power-off and subsequent power-on. However, I went into Task Scheduler, but I didn't see anything related to Power... Do you mean this "Hardware & Power" area in Control Panel? I intend for this NAS to be always on, so I don't know much about the power cycle options... thx

Similar issue here... all of a sudden I get a notice that an abnormality was detected and the volume(s) were unmounted. I searched around but it was not showing my disks, so I rebooted. When it came back, it looked like it had 5 fresh disks, but no volume. This is a VM on my ESXi machine that I'm playing with so no harm done, but it is concerning. I have just now created a new volume to see if it happens again.

Thanks for the suggestions/questions. I will give the power on/off and bios questions a try this weekend sometime. ...and no, I don't have spare cash lying around to spend .. that's how I ended up with XPEnology in the first place! I only have a single 80GB drive in it thus far that I found in the bottom of my desk drawer . My plan is to purchase 2-3 3TB disks over the next few months for my primary storage system (UnRaid) and replace 1 or 2TB disks which will be moved to the XPEnology server.

Confirmed. Purple ports work as well. I simply shutdown my system and plugged the single hdd into the purple SATA and booted. Everything seems fine. Now to find 8 2TB disks! Edit: Cannot get yellow ports to work in AHCI mode. When set to IDE everything works. Pretty sure AHCI only gives me hot-plug capability so I'm ok without it. Edit 2: Video showing normal manual restart initiated reboot sequence :

I searched for someone else running XPEnology and could not find anyone who confirmed if this motherboard was supported. So I will leave this post here in case anyone else has the same board. I set all my SATA ports to IDE and everything works well without additional tweaking. Using one of the 6 yellow SATA ports currently. Will try one of the two purple on the other controller and report back whether they work as well.