Test Components Without HDD

[chrisolson09]

Hey All,

I'm in the process of accumulating components for my first FreeNAS build! I'm going the route of the xeon-d 1521. Newegg had rare discount on them so I went ahead and pulled the trigger!

My concern is i'm accumulating the components as I see them on sale/have the money for them. Besides the Xeon-D processor and motherboard that I just purchased I've only gotten the case and power supply which are relatively inexpensive. Now that I've dropped 400+ on the processor my fear is that if I let it sit until I have all the components and hard drives and something is wrong with it, I will be out of luck as far as returning it. The only other large expense is all the hard drives I need for it.

If I purchased all the components except the HDDs, is there any tests that I can perform to make sure that my motherboard, processor, ram, etc are performing correctly without having the hard drives installed? I would greatly appreciate any suggestions you might have.

Chris

 

[Jailer]

Sure, you can install FreeNAS to a USB drive and see if your hardware works fine with it without creating a pool. Alternatively you could use something like Ultimate boot CD to test everything out.

 

[chris crude]

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/building-burn-in-and-testing-your-freenas-system.38/

 

[Chris Moore]

my fear is that if I let it sit until I have all the components and hard drives and something is wrong with it, I will be out of luck as far as returning it

This is a valid concern.
You should follow the steps in the burn-in guide linked above up to the point of testing the drives. You should also test the drives when you get them.
If possible, you should never let a component sit, untested, because of the potential of getting a dud.
Good luck with your build and do share the progress as it may help others.

 

[Chris Moore]

PS. Also take a look at this resource with monitoring scripts to keep track of the health of your system.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...for-freenas-scripts-including-disk-burnin.28/

 

[chrisolson09]

Wow thank you guys for advice! Those links are are going to be so helpful and get me off to a great start.

I will keep you posted on the build!