I'm pushing 5 years on my current server and I'm thinking it may be time for some sort of an upgrade.
The main issue I'm having is random ATA errors locking the system up at the most inopportune times. Probably the PATA to SATA adapter (I have a few more NOS ones on the shelf I could toss at it) but honestly I'm thinking an old "early" socket 940 board is a retro rig in 2023 and ough to be retired.
The question for me is how much of an upgrade should I shoot for? The main issue I have to deal with is if I keep my chassis, the backplane is 16x SATA. Not SAS. And if I want to keep my data, I either need a board with PCI-X (for my 3ware 9550 card) or I need to get a 16 port 9560 card (which is basically a 9550 in PCIe). The latter is doable... I know I found one once and thought about buying it (but didn't)... but I can get one for $30 used (and move over my BBU). Edit- Went ahead and bought the card. $30 isn't much these days...
But after that, I have some options to play with. Anything newer will have PCIe, so I don't necessarily need to keep my boot drive (which is currently an ancient 80GB SATA 7200RPM clay pigeon). If I'm not mistaken, I could use an M2 to PCIe adapter and run an NVME boot drive? Anybody done this before? Do such support MBR, or would I need something new enough to support GPT/uEFI? Otherwise, I have a few SATA SSDs kicking around (a low-end 120GB PNY and a 256GB Intel 5400s).
Currently I don't need a ton of computing power... unless I ever go back to running a Minecraft server or do anything else exciting. For what I currently do, the existing twin dual-core 940 setup works when it's not getting ATA errors. But it's a power hog to some degree and and is getting antiquated.
I may start looking around fleabay to see what I can find. Preferably something relatively cool running (No FBDIMMs, etc.). And probably supermicro eATX (as that's my thing and what I know will fit an work).
All of this said, If I found another 3U/4U file server on a newer chassis, I'd be open to a migration. But it would likely be more expense as I'd need all new drives and the like. The nice part of my current setup is that even though it was a pre-built SGI "rackable" system, it was built with enough off-the-shelf parts that it's in effect a barebones that can run practically anything I want with 2U/3U coolers and ATX connectors.
The main issue I'm having is random ATA errors locking the system up at the most inopportune times. Probably the PATA to SATA adapter (I have a few more NOS ones on the shelf I could toss at it) but honestly I'm thinking an old "early" socket 940 board is a retro rig in 2023 and ough to be retired.
The question for me is how much of an upgrade should I shoot for? The main issue I have to deal with is if I keep my chassis, the backplane is 16x SATA. Not SAS. And if I want to keep my data, I either need a board with PCI-X (for my 3ware 9550 card) or I need to get a 16 port 9560 card (which is basically a 9550 in PCIe). The latter is doable... I know I found one once and thought about buying it (but didn't)... but I can get one for $30 used (and move over my BBU). Edit- Went ahead and bought the card. $30 isn't much these days...
But after that, I have some options to play with. Anything newer will have PCIe, so I don't necessarily need to keep my boot drive (which is currently an ancient 80GB SATA 7200RPM clay pigeon). If I'm not mistaken, I could use an M2 to PCIe adapter and run an NVME boot drive? Anybody done this before? Do such support MBR, or would I need something new enough to support GPT/uEFI? Otherwise, I have a few SATA SSDs kicking around (a low-end 120GB PNY and a 256GB Intel 5400s).
Currently I don't need a ton of computing power... unless I ever go back to running a Minecraft server or do anything else exciting. For what I currently do, the existing twin dual-core 940 setup works when it's not getting ATA errors. But it's a power hog to some degree and and is getting antiquated.
I may start looking around fleabay to see what I can find. Preferably something relatively cool running (No FBDIMMs, etc.). And probably supermicro eATX (as that's my thing and what I know will fit an work).
All of this said, If I found another 3U/4U file server on a newer chassis, I'd be open to a migration. But it would likely be more expense as I'd need all new drives and the like. The nice part of my current setup is that even though it was a pre-built SGI "rackable" system, it was built with enough off-the-shelf parts that it's in effect a barebones that can run practically anything I want with 2U/3U coolers and ATX connectors.
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). Had a range of results between no POST and GRUB whining about HDD access out of bounds. And BIOS couldn't see the drive in any case it did POST. 
. Between that and the SSD incompatibilty, I've shut down the server and likely won't fire it up unless I must. Thankfully, the 4TB image drive does have a backup image of the boot drive that I may need to use.
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