Jens Bauer Posted July 2, 2019 Posted July 2, 2019 I've had a cheap JMB321 port multiplier on my EspressoBIN for more than a year. I've used it with a BTRFS RAID0 configuration on two 1TB harddisks. This worked fine so far. The day before yesterday I added another 1TB drive. I added the first partition and balanced it. No problems. Next partition, same thing, no problems (this was my web-partition with all my web-sites. Balanced fine). Next partition was almost unused, added it and balanced it and ... segmentation fault. This is not the fault of BTRFS! No commands were available, I had no rootfs anymore. I rebooted the board, nothing. Started from SD, couldn't see anything but the SD-card. As it's unlikely the 5 harddisks that were all fried at the same time, I decided to switch out the Port Multiplier (always have a couple of spare ones in the drawer). Now I could see the drives again. Thus what happened was that when BTRFS started the balancing, the JMB321 overheated, because those cheap boards do not come with a heatsink. I did attach a heatsink to the spare one I had, so it'll postpone the problem for a while. Unfortunately the web and mail partitions were both destroyed (those were the ones I balanced). The other partitions are all intact and working. -So I do not recommend using those cheap Port Multipliers, but if you do, please do yourself a favour and add a heatsink or keep the PM-board in the fridge. Update: And never, ever use those cheap chinese SATA-cables that comes with the Port Multiplier - buy some that have a well-known quality brand on it. Also remember that SATA cables have a maximum mating count of 50 cycles (and no, they do not produce more SATA cables). And remember: Real men don't make backups. ... ...They cry.
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