First FreeNAS build, keeps freezing/dying

[hondageek]

Hi All, This is my first foray into FreeNAS. I built a machine from my old workstation which was ultra stable. It's an Intel DX38BT board, Q9550, 8gb, (6) 1TB Barracudas plugged directly into mobo sata ports, OS on a flash drive plugged into mobo I/O usb 2.0 port. It's running 8.3.0 x64. I have the 6 HDDs configured as a RaidZ2. The system boots fine and seems to function fine, but randomly freezes/dies. Sometimes the directly attached monitor goes blank with only a flashing cursor on the bottom left, sometimes it still shows the menu (option 1-11) but is totally unresponsive (directly and web GUI). The only way out is to power off and reboot. Any thoughts?

 

[William Grzybowski]

None, sounds a lot like a hardware issue, maybe faulty PSU (or not enough wattage for that amount of hard disks)?

 

[hondageek]

At the advice of a much more tech savvy friend, I booted to BIOS and let it run overnight to see what happened. All was good the next morning, I left for the day and came back and BIOS was frozen. The monitor display hadn't changed but it was totally unresponsive to any keyboard input.

 

[cyberjock]

That's definitely a hardware issue. You'll want to start troubleshooting and trying to identify the exact failure. I'd try a RAM test first since its fairly easy and Memtest x86 is free.

 

[frankskeb]

I had the same.
one hard disk was bad.

 

[hondageek]

Update: I replaced the video card that I thought may have been the issue (the mobo has no onboard video) and it ran much longer than usual. I started to transfer some files and all was good for a while then it restarted rather than freezing.

 

[JaimieV]

That does make it sounds like the PSU is too weak for the job. Have you got another you can swap in for trials?

Generally with PSU's you get what you pay for - a £15 PSU that says it does 500W is lying! A £40 PSU that says it does 350W is likely to be correct.