BrianAz Posted August 27, 2014 #1 Posted August 27, 2014 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.
BrianAz Posted August 27, 2014 Author #2 Posted August 27, 2014 (edited) 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 : Edited January 13, 2015 by Guest
Schnapps Posted August 27, 2014 #3 Posted August 27, 2014 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! LOL How about 8x6TB? ) TROLOLOL Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
bod Posted August 27, 2014 #4 Posted August 27, 2014 Please could you try setting up a Power Off / On in Task Scheduler and see if it changes the BIOS settings? Can you confirm what BIOS it is? ie AMIBIOS. Thanks
liukuohao Posted August 27, 2014 #5 Posted August 27, 2014 Please could you try setting up a Power Off / On in Task Scheduler and see if it changes the BIOS settings? Can you confirm what BIOS it is? ie AMIBIOS. Thanks 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.
BrianAz Posted August 27, 2014 Author #6 Posted August 27, 2014 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.
liukuohao Posted August 28, 2014 #7 Posted August 28, 2014 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. Ok then, if you know what you are doing (spending wisely), please let us know your result, as it will be interesting to know if it has bios reseting problem with Gigabyte Award Bios. Thank you Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
BrianAz Posted August 28, 2014 Author #8 Posted August 28, 2014 Please could you try setting up a Power Off / On in Task Scheduler and see if it changes the BIOS settings? Can you confirm what BIOS it is? ie AMIBIOS. Thanks 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
liukuohao Posted August 29, 2014 #9 Posted August 29, 2014 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. Ok first thing first, just want to confirm that........ Whenever there is a reboot on the system, your system did not experience BIOS checksum error, and stuck at POST, and you have to physically set up the original setting in your BIOS configuration BEFORE you can proceed it further to load NANOBOOT, right? If is working normally, then it should boot normally and you should able to see NANOBOOT loading (seeing from your monitor),If it is right, congratulations, your WORST nightmare is over!!! Next step is to play around the settings on the Power Schedule, set a time for the system to boot up, say everyday at 9.00am. if it boots up at 9.00am without being resetting your BIOS configuration and stuck at POST, then pad yourself at the back!!! Resetting BIOS is not an issue on your motherboard.
BrianAz Posted August 29, 2014 Author #10 Posted August 29, 2014 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.
BrianAz Posted August 29, 2014 Author #11 Posted August 29, 2014 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
liukuohao Posted August 31, 2014 #12 Posted August 31, 2014 Great stuff, good investigation report. Now, may be dual bios Gigabyte motherboard is the solution, for solving the reseting bios nightmare! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
BrianAz Posted September 1, 2014 Author #13 Posted September 1, 2014 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.
liukuohao Posted September 1, 2014 #14 Posted September 1, 2014 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. 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!
BrianAz Posted September 1, 2014 Author #15 Posted September 1, 2014 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. 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!
liukuohao Posted September 2, 2014 #16 Posted September 2, 2014 Hi BrainAz, I am thinking seriously about getting the Gigabyte dual-bios motherboard, would you mind, if you can test whether schedule to start up, working ok (I know it should work, but just to double confirm it) Thank you.
BrianAz Posted September 2, 2014 Author #17 Posted September 2, 2014 Hi BrainAz, I am thinking seriously about getting the Gigabyte dual-bios motherboard, would you mind, if you can test whether schedule to start up, working ok (I know it should work, but just to double confirm it) Thank you. 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.
liukuohao Posted September 2, 2014 #18 Posted September 2, 2014 Thanks for information, if schedule start up works and after system is booted, dual bios kicks in (preventing any bios corruption) then I will see if this motherboard is available for sale on eBay or not. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
BrianAz Posted September 3, 2014 Author #19 Posted September 3, 2014 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.
BrianAz Posted September 3, 2014 Author #20 Posted September 3, 2014 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.
BrianAz Posted September 3, 2014 Author #21 Posted September 3, 2014 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:
BrianAz Posted September 3, 2014 Author #22 Posted September 3, 2014 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
liukuohao Posted September 3, 2014 #23 Posted September 3, 2014 Hi BrianAz, Thank you very much for testing out the scheduled Start up and shut down feature. Personally, before I buy a Gigabyte motherboard, I would prefer to have more than 4 SATA ports. Hence I prefer the GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard as you are now testing which has a total of 6 ports. However, I did not feel comfortable having a separate VGA PCI-E card running on the GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard, since it does not come with on board build-in VGA port. So, I search around and found this: Gigabyte GA-G41M-COMBO link: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3505#ov I have checked the specification and this motherboard does have DUAL BIOS feature. In your opinion, does the DUAL BIOS on the GA-G41M-COMBO reprogram the bios chip when there is automatically scheduled start up? Same as your GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard? Thank you.
BrianAz Posted September 3, 2014 Author #24 Posted September 3, 2014 Hi BrianAz, Thank you very much for testing out the scheduled Start up and shut down feature. Personally, before I buy a Gigabyte motherboard, I would prefer to have more than 4 SATA ports. Hence I prefer the GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard as you are now testing which has a total of 6 ports. However, I did not feel comfortable having a sephttp://[/url]arate VGA PCI-E card running on the GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard, since it does not come with on board build-in VGA port. So, I search around and found this: Gigabyte GA-G41M-COMBO link: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3505#ov I have checked the specification and this motherboard does have DUAL BIOS feature. In your opinion, does the DUAL BIOS on the GA-G41M-COMBO reprogram the bios chip when there is automatically scheduled start up? Same as your GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard? Thank you. 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
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