danosimo

Hi, The way to install this headless is to use the "force USB boot" method by pressing the small button next to the USB & LAN (back of unit) while powering on. Once you see the front light turn orange it will boot off the USB drive and you will find the server with the Synology Assistant as per normal install. Hope that helps! Daniel

I meant to say NetCAST, the operating system on LG TVs I have

Regarding the Plex server (Version 0.9.16.3) and LG TV clients (Version 2.5.3?) seems to work fine with transcoder option in automatic. If you disable DTS convert option it will play anything without problems (via Wifi, too). I did have problems playing content from LG TV and using DLNA. I disabled transcoding under Media Server - control panel in DSM, as soon as I disabled the video transcoding no more problems. I have the MediaCAST (NOT WebOS) in both LG TVs. The problem with android client is that is free only for a limited time, then you must go for the pass, but I have to say that 720p on my Sony Xperia Z3 using plex client looks impressive. My only complaint is how slow the client is for LG TVs, I guess the small CPU inside suffers just navigating menus, or maybe the wireless, but I get fluid 1080p video on my TVs using no wires. Nice front for movie collection!! DanO

TungIT75, First to your questions. Yes, you can manage the whole install process from your desktop/Laptop PC without connecting a Screen/Keyboard/Mouse to the XPEnology machine. That is the idea of IPMI, and well beyond that you can enter BIOS for the board using IPMI also, and of course login to the XPEnology command line (as you would on a SSH/Telnet session), you can even MAP a DVD/CD ROM drive from your laptop as if you had it connected to the XPEnology machine to install whatever, I think you can even do this from an ISO file without a DVD/CD Rom at all. So this LAN can only be used for that and will NOT show up in your OS installed (or in XPEnology in our case). As for the other 2 LAN cards, they can "BOND" together. You can configure this in the Network section of DSM control panel, select both cards and choose Create BOND, then the type of bonding you want as explained forward, that is to make them work together at the same time with the same IP address. This works in two different Bonding modes (you choose); 1. Doubling the effective speed and balancing traffic between the two LAN cards. This is called Link aggregation, under standard IEEE802.3ad. I tis also called EtherChannel with LOAD BALANCING. 2. OR you can use the second LAN as backup, called active/standby in DSM, always connected but only working when the other fails. Say you have two routers and this way if one router fails, the other kicks in. Otherwise you may use the second LAN as a second interface with different IP address and NO BONDING at all. Say you want to backup over the network to another machine and not use bandwidth from client PCs. This way you can have two different LAN networks for separate things, or simply two IP addresses within the same physical network. Please note that to be able to use Link aggregation you MUST have a switch that supports it (802.3ad). Most home user switches DO NOT support this (802.3ad), even low end business switches do not support this. You can do failover/backup mode without anything else required. Same for using both LAN cards with different IP addresses, nothing is required. I hope that helps Daniel

Yea, Like Kei78 said, IPMI is a dedicated LAN that you can use to control the server as if you had a screen-keyboard-mouse remotelly and much more. Like monitor MB resources (temp. Volts, etc), update FW for MB, and other administrator stuff. It is a common function on Server Motherboards, and well worth it for a NAS config. Back to the initial question, I never disabled any controller, nor did I change SATA settings to IDE. I am running XPEnology 5.1 with AHCI in my BIOS and all SATA controllers ENABLED. I DO NOT have any drives connected to the SATAII ports, so this may be the reason for it working fine. But I had no problems doing a CLEAN install on 5.1 and then restoring my data. Like I said before, when I tried to expand my volume with additional disks well after I upgraded to 5.1, is when trouble started. But after flashing the FW a few days ago I have upgraded my volume with a new disk to RAID6 and no problems at all. I will be adding a new 1TB drive soon, so I will report. In any case this board is a champ, if you have the money for it

The actual link to the SATA controller firmware is this one http://www.asrockrack.com/support/ipmi.asp#Marvell9230 I guess the above one is for the IPMI

I almost forgot, the most important, I am NOT using the 4 SATA2 ports so far. I have an 8 bay chassis (U-NAS 8 Bay) so I have no need. I assume also if you have the drives connected to multiples controllers under 1 single software RAID may change things. I have 1 single volume so far with 6x 1TB drives..... RAID6

Hi again, Yes, the link in the Asrock web page is hard to see. Look here and see within the description of the MB there is a link http://www.asrockrack.com/support/ipmi.asp . it is posted here on the main product page, notice the "To update Marvell SE 9230 FW, please click here" within the specs for the Mother Board as pointed below. Kind of silly to put in in there like that, very easy to miss... C2550D4I ◦Intel Avoton C2550 Quad-Core Processor ◦DDR3 1600/1333 Dual-channel Max. 64GB UDIMM ◦2 SATA3 6.0Gbps, 4 SATA2 3.0Gbps by C2550 ◦4 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s by Marvell SE9230, 2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s by Marvell SE9172 (To update Marvell SE 9230 FW, please click here) <========== LINK HERE!!!! [/color]◦Dual Intel i210 Gigabit LAN ports (with Teaming function) ◦3 x USB 2.0 ports (2 rear ports + 1 via headers or 1 rear ports + 2 via headers controlled by USB_SEL1 and USB_SEL2 jumper) ◦1 x PCI-E x8 slot So I have been using the C2550D4i for 1 year with nanoboot/XPEnology and I have always had AHCI mode for the drives, not sure if it applies for 1 SATA controller or all of them, I assume for all of them (Marvell & Intel). I have had 5 x 1TB 2.5in drives in RAID5 working great. I am running 5.1.xx and have had no problems until I wanted to expand my RAID5. I started to get all kinds of SMART errors and BAD sector errors after adding the 6th & 7th drives. After this I backed out until I see the update. After firmware update I updated to RAID6 with the 6th drive with no problems at all so far. I have also a USB 3.0 PCIE card (1x) and it does the USB backups very fast. Very happy with this board so far!!!!

I just updated my ASRock C2550D4i Motherboard with the new Marvell SATA FW, wanted to know if anyone else tried it and if things got better as far as the SMART errors (and bad sector messages). I tried to expand my volume before this (on XPEnology 5.1 w/Raid 5) and had all kinds of problems. I am NOT using the 4 SATA II ports yet. My BIOS has always been configured as AHCI and never had trouble with 5x1TB disks installed until the 6th disk (and 7th disk) was added. Anyone has 8 or more disks on XPEnology 5.1.xx with any of these two Asrock Avoton boards?