Simple Hard Drive Swap That Wasn't

[Zema Bus]

I swapped the drives from my main system into my new system today. The new one I was going to use for a project but it performs better than my main system so I decided to swap them around. After I had the drives hooked up it went into a boot loop, with them disconnected it booted normally. All these drives are known good and were working just fine before I swapped them so I knew it wasn't the drives. It was almost certainly the aging power supply I was using, about 13 - 15 years old. So I was in for more time and work than I had planned on. Since I didn't have a spare one of high enough capacity lying around I pulled out the one in my former main machine, which had powered those drives just fine. That solved that problem. But now I'll have to get a new power supply for the other machine, hopefully I can find one with rear cables. I lost my grub bootloader for Slackware, the board's UEFI couldn't see it, I figured I'd have to chroot in to fix it, but since Arch was booting ok I updated its Grub which picked it up, and then in Slackware I just had to reinstall Grub to Slackware's drive. One strange problem I had with the other machine happens with this one too - on cold boots I don't get a display until the default distro boots to the login manager. On warm boots I do have a display. The only things common between the two systems are the video card, drives and power supply. But the video card used to be in my gaming machine and it has never done that.

[Grogan]

Fucking PSU's these days... suffering Hell. I'm going to order a power supply tester of some sort, it's not that easy to swap them out for testing anymore with all those connections.

Pretty much any time I touch hardware I get more than I was expecting.

So you get nothing until X starts on a cold boot. Is this just while Linux is booting or do you not even see any bios boot messages or anything? Does the CPU have graphics? What about the bios setting for which display to initialize?

I have mine set to PEG (initialize discrete video card) and I have the "multi monitor support" disabled. I don't think it initializes the Intel display adapter at all with that multi monitor support disabled. The only evidence it exists (doesn't even show up in lspci) are some ioports. X sees them when probing but there's no communication. I see this in the Xorg.log: xf86EnableIO: failed to enable I/O ports 000-03ff (Operation not permitted)

[Zema Bus]

I don't see any bios boot messages either, just a blank screen all the way until the login manager for Arch. There's no integrated graphics in this CPU, it's an i9 12900KF. I'll have to check the bios about which display to initialize, I don't remember seeing that setting (I have two displays hooked up).

Let me know what power supply tester you find. I have a number of geriatric power supplies lol!

[Grogan]

Oh your bios wouldn't know about your display setup, "init display first" is for the graphics adapter. (all the same, it should be set right). The only reason I have "multi monitor" setting is because it's the built in Intel graphics, and the multi monitor keeps it enabled so you can init the graphics card first, and still use the onboard for multiple displays etc.

I fuckin forgot all about that F shit when ordering. I meant to get one without intel graphics but it's not bothering me.

[Grogan]

I ordered this PSU tester

https://www.amazon.ca/Supply-Tester-Com ... 0CK61ZSZN/

We'll see if it's any good. It should make it easier.

I also ordered an 8g tube of Arctic MX4. I would have gone with MX6, but I'm not in the mood to try anything new. (and the MX4 comes with a nice little plastic spatula).

[Zema Bus]

Thanks Grogan. Yeah you would also have saved a little $ with the KF version vs the K

[Zema Bus]

I got a replacement power supply already, it arrived the same day (ordered last night after midnight). This one is an EVGA 850 W with a 10 year warranty. I've had good luck with EVGA power supplies the last several years.

[Grogan]

That's good shipping. I wouldn't get anything that fast because I live in bumfuckville.

Corsair was the first for the 10 year PSU warranty and others followed. Hell, I've got two antecs that lasted near 15 years (and they had 5 year warranties I think).