Re: A8N-E: drive limit?

On 09/21/11 04:10 pm, Nobody > (Revisited) wrote:

I just re-purposed an old machine with the Asus A8N-E for use as a DIY
Network Attached Storage device. I started with four old IDE drives that
I had already, and proved that the thing worked -- booting FreeNAS
8.0.1RC1 from a USB thumb drive. I then purchased four SATA drives,
intending to replace each of the IDE drives in turn by the much larger
(and quicker) SATA drives (thus increasing the storage space without
losing any of the data I had already stored there). I was able to do
this -- but *only if* I had no more than 5 drives connected at any one
time: with any more drives connected POST would display them all, but
the machine wouldn't boot.

I cannot find any documentation that suggests that the A8N-E is limited
in the number of hard disks that can be connected at any one time.

Perce

Not familiar with the A8N-E, but the usual "generic" solution for
problems like this is updating the BIOS.

Sometimes you may find mention of your issue in the BIOS changelogs, but
often some of the weirder problems (like yours) get "fixed" in the
process of fixing something else and never get mentioned in print.

Just on the off-chance that a BIOS upgrade does screw something up, save
your old BIN files just in case.

I have BIOS version 1013, which is the latest I could find. The Asus German Web site used to have beta versions for some motherboards, but I've never found anything later for this one.

Perce

.

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