Being An Idiot Takes A Lot of Work

[lsanderson]

So it has seemed that my desktop computer has been pining for the fjords, or at least imitating a boat anchor more and more. The CPU usage has been through the roof, and it took two grown men to move the mouse from one side of the screen to the other, and most of a week to move it. Oh and a host of delightful error messages and BSOD, which are apparently easy to analyze if you have a computer degree or are good at deciphering gibberish. Windows has a BSOD troubleshooter, which on each and every BSOD I tried it on, was absolutely worthless. Of course, if you want to properly solve BSOD errors, you have to wait an eternity after each one as Windows carefully writes down what state the system was in when it happened. Five minutes here, ten minutes there, pretty soon we're talking days. And trust me, I've looked. You don't want to have to chase down those files it's writing.

I keep thinking I ought to put a new computer together, but it seems like the worst of times to do that. GPU prices are through the roof, memory prices are high, and there's the chance that all CPUs are going to face design changes off sometime in the future. Coffee Lake processors are the latest, and they're slower than the Kaby Lake ones they're replacing. (I'm not making the names up -- it's too hard to beat reality at that game.) So, anyway, for no particular reason, I decided to look for a new hard drive controller. I've been using all of the motherboard's SATA, and a two port SATA controller with one port linked to a port replicator which split it out to four or five other drives.

With Google as my trusty sidekick, Newegg and Amazon my friend, I go off looking for SATA controllers, and I find two with 8 ports. I order one, and it comes Monday. So I disconnect the power, the monitors, network, firewire, USB cords, and sound from the computer, roll it into the other room, hoist it up on the bed, take both sides off only to discover that some lazy ass (me) didn't fasten the drive cages on the far side the last time so there was no need to take off the far panel. I also wanted to replace one drive that was not displaying as being alive, which took me to removing two of the drive cages and six of the drives before I found the likely drive. This means I unplug the power and SATA cable from each drive, and disconnect the drive cage fan. While I'm at it, I wash the dust filters too. Now, I keep jonesing after a modular power supply because mine ain't. It looks like a whole octopus got pilloried to the bottom of the computer case with black cables going everywhere, including the ones I snuck out the back. It really helps that the SATA power plugs on the power supply appear to be its weakest link, many of them have broken and can no longer be used. Of course, SATA power is about all anything uses these days, at least for drives, so I have a couple of extensions with SATA plugs that plug into the old Molex plugs that IDE drives and everything else ustta use back when steam boilers powered everything that was not powered by hamster wheels. So I pull the old controller and the port splitter out, put in the new controller and start hooking up power connectors and SATA connectors to each drive and running them down to the new controller. Then I put the sides back on the case, hoist it back off the bed, and wheel it into the office. The next ten minutes are spent plugging in monitors, USB cables, firewire, network, sound, and the power plug. I fire it up, and it works. Well, it sorta works. Most of the drives are missing.

Now it did warn that you'd hafta load a driver for the controller. So I go look, and there's a baby CD with stuff on it. Lots and lots of stuff, none of which will autorun, and a lot of stuff that makes it look like they made one CD for twenty or thirty products. They do have a Marvell folder, and under it a whole bunch of folders with different numbers, none of which match the chip in the controller. I look at the manual, which basically says Windows will ask for a driver and you're supposed to give it one. They just forget to mention which one. Not one to freeze, I try installing them all, and reboot the computer. Still not a lotta drives. I go off to Google for drivers, which is kind of like a circular ring of sites that don't work or don't have the right drivers. Some sites say you need Marvell's Storage Utility, so I download that. Of course, it won't quite run under Windows 10, but I don't let that stop me. Reboot. Still not a lotta drives. Back to Google, back to download more drivers. I move the controller from one slot to another. Still not a lotta drives.

So, while I still have some hair, I go back and look at that black octopus tangle at the bottom of the case and trace the long extension that I carefully plugged into the drives. Yup, not plugged in to a power source. I, uhm, err, plug it in, then turn the power supply off and on, and reboot. Drives! It's alive!

Oh, and CPU usage is down 100%! (Don't argue, not my math.)

Comments

[guppiecat]

Related, today I learned that an enterprise switch stack works a whole lot better when you plug it in.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

A brilliantly entertaining piece of writing. I'm confident I enjoyed reading it far, far more than you enjoyed living through the experience that gave you cause to write it.

While our levels of technical expertise vary, uh, considerably, I take heart in the fact that my basic approach to dealing with this sort of stuff resembles your own rather a lot. (The initial research, tackling the whole mess, further research when something doesn't initially work, tracking down software, trying, trying, trying until it all works. That approach.

Now as for the fact that it's now alive....

I hope it never gives you cause to regret that. You do end on something out of a horror movie. :-)

Thanks!

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

It works and it just took longer than I thought. It looks like the manual has, err, more information in it than I thought, but once their process failed, I stopped reading. Oh well. I had a nagging feeling I forgot to plug it in anyway, just not strong enough for me to look in the tangle.