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    I want to build my own home lab, but i'm totally blind. Problem, I cannot modify any BIOS settings.

    BIOS boot order is especially frustrating because some OSes like Windows will change UEFI settings during updates or wipe out your boot loader. You might consider keeping all of your bootable operating systems on removable media and simply physically swapping disks to control which one boots...
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    CaseLabs announces it has been 'forced into bankruptcy and liquidation'

    I own a number of CaseLabs cases, and they are wonderful. I will miss them a lot. CaseLabs products were built primarily out of 2mm thick aluminum sheet. CaseLabs itself was a pretty small operation, a long-time specialty machine shop that found a nice little side business making high-end...
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    OSX HBA IT mode cards

    I know they are not as cheap or widely available as LSI cards, but the ATTO ExpressSAS cards work great under OSX and fully support SAS-2 features: SAS expanders (multiple levels) and disks > 2TB. The two cards to look for are the ATTO H608 (internal 8-port) and ATTO H680 (external 8-port)...
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    need help repairing LSI 9201-16i card

    Based the placement near the connector, it is very likely these are AC-coupling capacitors on the TX+/TX- or RX+/RX- high speed data differential pairs. I believe the SAS / SATA specs define these as 10 nF (or 0.01 uF, or 10000 pF -- depending on your choice of SI prefixes). These caps look...
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    SATA drives behind expander still a no-go?

    I have a number of ZFS-based systems that use SATA drives behind expanders and they work fine. I would not recommend any SAS gen1 (3Gb/s) gear, but the later LSI SAS2 and SAS3 stuff is fine (LSI 2008 controllers and later). I would also stick to reasonably reliable newer (~2013 and later)...
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    Home firewall poll

    I use a Mikrotik router. It provides nearly all of the capabilities of Linux IP tables with a web or command-line UI. The hardware is very inexpensive, low-power, and reliable (Linux-based OS kernel running on an embedded MIPS/ARM/PPC SoC). Unfortunately, the documentation has always been...
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    Trying to Recover MDADM Array

    What do you get now when you run "cat /proc/mdstat"? If it shows that the array is active and the sync is no longer pending, then you may have an actual problem with the filesystem on the array being corrupted. This might have happened if you typed the wrong /dev/hdX name when trying to do...
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    Trying to Recover MDADM Array

    I would try running the "mount" command (no arguments) and look to see if really is mounted. The error message you are seeing is from the kernel based on its mount-table state in RAM, not based on anything stored on the disks. So if the kernel says it is mounted or busy, this doesn't imply a...
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    Trying to Recover MDADM Array

    Based on the output from /proc/mdstat your array has gone into "auto-read-only" mode. The classic advice to get out of this is to run: mdadm --readwrite /dev/mdN You may want to try and figure out what caused this before you run the above command. I have used Linux MD raid (with many...
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    Will turning on my rack trip the Circuit Breakers?

    I am not sure where you live, but if you are in the US, you probably have 15A outlets which can provide roughly 1800W. So, the outlet is probably wired to a 15A breaker. But you are using a UPS and two power strips. The power strips likely have 15A fast-blow fuses. These would probably blow...
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    LSI 9200-8E and Sans Digital TowerRAID TR8M+B - 8 Bay eSATA?

    In the world of SAS host adapters and interconnect, there's a different type of device called a SAS expander that lets a single controller fan out to multiple drives. It's not a very good analogy, but a SAS expander is kind of like a network switch that allows any port to talk to any other port...
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    LSI 9200-8E and Sans Digital TowerRAID TR8M+B - 8 Bay eSATA?

    I think that's a SATA port-multiplier based enclosure. There are two esata ports on the back, and I believe each one goes to a 1-to-4 port multiplier on the back plane. SAS controllers, in general, won't work with SATA port multipliers. If a SAS HBA is working in SATA mode it expects a single...
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    Plain simple deep 4U chassis w front fans and nothing else???

    The Rosewill RSV-L4500 is a good, inexpensive option: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147164 https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Server-Chassis-Rackmount-Metal/dp/B0091IZ1ZG Very simple case, but lots of room and easy to work with. You can pull out the fan bays and add...
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    Win 7 SP1 new install problems with Windows Update - help

    I went through this recently also. The key to doing this smoothly is to install the "Windows 7 SP1 Convenience Rollup". Apparently MS has held off from releasing an SP2 for Win7 because this would reset the clock on their end-of-support date for commercial customers. So we all have to suffer...
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    This Guy Has the Fastest Home Internet in the United States

    [ Title of the article at motherboard.vice.com ] This Guy Has the Fastest Home Internet in the United States Discuss. :)
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    recommendations for quiet rack mount NAS case?

    A nice feature of that RSV-L4500 case is that if you pull all of the HDD cages out then you get 9x 5.25" bays. So you can put any kind of drive cage you want into it. Rosewill has another model of the same base chassis with 3x 4-drive hotswap bays (12 total) called the RSV-L4412 for about...
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    LSI9211-8i on Ubuntu 15.10 timeouts

    It looks like this may finally be fixed in the latest ESXi 6.0.0 patch (build 4192238) released on 8/5. I am able to boot 10 out of 10 times with MSIX re-enabled and I am not seeing any hangs.
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    recommendations for quiet rack mount NAS case?

    I think there are 3 common options you can consider, all 4U ~26 in. deep: Norco RPC-4224: http://www.norcotek.com/product/rpc-4224/ 24 hot-swap bays, about $400 new Lots of examples of RPC-4224 builds on the web You will want to get the 120mm fan wall and replace the fans Rosewill...
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    Memtest86+ errors under less than ideal conditions

    First, I would make sure you have the latest BIOS. Just for good measure, clear the CMOS and reset the BIOS defaults. Next, try running the Passmark version of Free Edition MemTest86 from memtest86.com. You will need to follow the instructions on their web page for booting via UEFI...
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    Memtest86+ errors under less than ideal conditions

    If you are seeing Memtest errors and the addresses are all under 1MB then there's a good chance that this is actually just an issue with BIOS reserved memory or some other BIOS-related bug. It looks like this is probably happening in your case, based on the screenshot. You are not seeing...