Fail after power outage

[todeko]

After a power outage my B3 didn't start anymore.
Using the relevant articles on this forum I tried to restore keeping the data, however without success.
After that I tried a complete restore, the result was even worse: nothing happened anymore, all LEDs blinking even the 4 LAN/WAN LEDs.
I decided to take out the HD and check it on a linux PC: HD corrupt. After reformatting all checks where OK and I could use it as external drive of my linux PC.
So I tried again in the B3, no success.
Went to the rescue disk: after several attempts I got access: I however wasn't able to mount the drive.
I reformatted the drive (1 ext2 partition) and edited fstab, and was able to mount the drive.
Now I was convinced I could use the normal reinstall procedure, since the drive was recognised.
However after several atempts, no success.
I'm out of ideas and this has kept me busy for several weeks, who has any idea or even the right solution?

[Ubi]

Please define 'no succes', we are not psychic.

Did you remove the ext2 partition begore you attempted the reinstall?

[Gordon]

Can you verify that the hard drive spins up while booting the B3? It sounds like your power supply unit may be bust (not giving enough amps).

[Ubi]

I was under the impression he formatted and remounted the ext2 partition when the disk was inside the B3. But I agree that this sentence was a bit cryptic

[Gordon]

What I read was that he couldn't mount it at first, but after a while - after running mkfs - he could. My suspicion is that this was coincidence. As you may know, the B3 will use a lot more power while spinning up the disk than during normal operation, which is why the PSU is a 3A unit rather than a 1A unit which would be more than sufficient to run the B3 according to its specifications. My guess is that when flash was no longer accessed, the disk at some time got sufficient power to spin up and became accessible. That won't work when booting the B3 though, as u-boot will simply time out long before the disk comes up.

[Ubi]

Interesting point. So the question is not whether it spins up, but how long it takes to do so. I'm not sure what the timeout on uboot is, but if its second you should be able to diagnose by just listening to the disk.

[todeko]

Sorry for my short and cryptic explanations, it was hard not to make a 10 page description of all the steps I took.

No success means I was not able to get access to the drive or was able to do a restore of the system.

I can hear the drive starting, I see the drive LEDs (inside the B3) blinking, so I assume the drive is spinning up as it should.

I don't think there is a problem spinning the disk: before reformatting the disk in the B3 I could already get the HD parameters through HDPARM, so the drive was accessible, but not mountable. I thought to be able to solve this by reformatting the drive from the B3 OS, using MKe2fs, making 1 single ext2 partition.
Since I could mount the drive and access the partition I was convinced I could reinstall now from scratch, but the well-known reinstall procedure did not work: the B3 boots, I see it accesses the drive, then goes to the USB stick and back to the drive, but after a few seconds no activity anymore. The status LED stays GREEN.

[Gordon]

Additional question: does the drive also make the distinctive rattling noise that many people have complained about keeping them awake at night? Spinning the disk is one, getting the heads to leave park is another. If you own another PSU - from a laptop perhaps - the simplest way is to try whether the B3 will start with that other PSU. If you are running the stock WD Green drive than a PSU that can give at least 2A nominal should do the trick. You might also want to make sure no USB peripherals are attached when booting.

[todeko]

Hi Gordon,
no rattling noise.

I bought the B3 without HD and added a WD Green 1TB. First install worked fine (procedure using USB stick) and the B3 was operational for months until the power outage (external, not a PSU failure).

Honestly, I do not think this is a PSU problem, but I'll check if I can find another PSU that fits the B3 and test.

[Gordon]

'Rattling' is probably not the right word for this particular sound. In any case the Green drives are quite noisy going in and out of park and with your ear to the device you should also be able to pick up the sound of the heads moving during reading and writing. You should be able to get an idea of the sounds you're looking for when you can replicate accessing the drive from the rescue system.

[Ubi]

Did you remove the ext2 partition before attempting the reinstall

[todeko]

OK,
I have found a 2A PSU and I am trying again to reinstall.
Booting with the rescue USB stick is no problem, I have access to the system and to the drive.
I removed the ext2 partition (so no partition left) and tried the reinstall procedure.
When I plug the PSU and release the button, the HD rattles a few seconds with the HD LED blinking, then I see the LED of the USB stick blinking and the HD light goes on again for 1 second. The nothing happens anymore: B3 LED stays green, USB stick LED is on and the HD LED is off.
Any new advice?

[Gordon]

I'm not quite getting this. You can access the drive using the rescue stick in interactive mode, but the same rescue stick in install mode doesn't work?

You can in fact do it manually. Create a new linux partition as first partition on the disk and format it - it should be ext3 actually. Mount it and unpack the file you find on the USB stick in /install/payload to it.

Since the system was unexpectedly shut down by a power outage, other elements on the disk may have been corrupted and these may in fact be the reason why the system won't boot into a state where you can access it. I found this out myself the hard way when experimenting with alternate setups to minimize disk usage. It is probably wise therefore to edit fstab to not mount swap and home. Once you can get an ssh connection with the system you can do that manually and fix possible errors.

[todeko]

Hi Gordon,

thank you, your solution helped me solve the problem.
Reinstalled everything and now I have a clean B3.

[Gordon]

Just for the record, can you tell what steps you did to eventually solve the issue? Do you have a clue about what actually caused your troubles? Other than the power outage itself of course.

The information stored on this forum may help others to solve similar issues in future.