Storage options for use with x750e
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You can get IDE SSDs but I wouldn't ever get one myself. They are far more expensive and some are very early SSDs complete with all the short comings they had.
http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-32GB-SSD-2-5-Inch/dp/B000T9QRKE
Steve
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Oh wow I didn't know they made ssd with IDE connection. Your right definitely not worth it. I think I will just grab two 8 gig CF cards off a local shop or even ebay. I would also grab a sata to ide adapter to try it out. Steve do you think there maybe big issues with that approach or is it something I can work out in time?
Thanks
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With using a CF card? Probably not. You may need to run from HD if you want to use Snort or Squid, though many people don't.
With using an IDE-SATA adapter? No idea. The bios is picky about the geometry presented to it (some bug causes it to miscalculate the boot point with certain geometries) so anything could happen. ;)
Steve
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Hi I managed to get my hands on two 8 gb Sandisk extreme III cards. Unfortunately I am having issues booting PF. I tried writing the 4 GB images to both the cards with either physdisk and also used win32diskimager with no success of getting a boot out of either of the cards. In putty I get as far as the post message where it shows all the onboard devices but goes no further. I have changed the speed to 9600 bauds on the motherboard so I can see the post messages and the PF start up, but I only see post message and nothing else. I have followed, as far as I can tell, the tutorial instructions for the x750e-e to the letter. Is their a way to test the cf cards and see if they are bootable?
Thanks
So I decide to try something to figure out if its a CF card issue. I popped in the original 128 MB CF card that came with the machine and which also has the freebsd image that I used to flash the bios. It does work, but when I wrote the same image to the 8 gig sandisk cards and went through the auto detect and then the setting changes for the large size to be recognized I dont seem to be able to boot from either card. I am guessing its a card compatibility issue? Is there more I can do or should I find some 4 gig CF cards.
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Yep, it's probably a card geometry issue. Have you tried booting the cards with the bios settings all at auto?
Are you going through the process of going to auto to detect the correct values for C and S before settings H to 2?I did, a while back, attempt to collect geometry values that worked and those that didn't in order to try to determine what values caused problems. I never got very far. It would also be interesting to know how the original user who suggested settings heads to 2 came up with that workaround. I have always assumed it was a well known bios workaround from earlier buggy bioses, like the 32GB bug for example. However I've never been able to find any references to that.
Steve
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Hi Steve,
I have tried the steps you posted all last night with no results. I am going to try and find some 2 or 4 gig sandisks to try out.
Thanks
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Here is a pic of the card so other people dont run into the same issue.
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I finally got my hands on a 4 gig CF card pic below. This one loads pf sense no problem. Now I have got a bit of an issue again with setting up the wan and lan. I follow the auto config and both connections get detected, but after the system reboots in the top portion where the wan and lan have IP addresses my setup does not. I also get the error
"mskc2: Uncorrectable PCI Express error mskc3: Uncorrectable PCI Express error".
I havent really seen this issue in my searches of the forum, but if there is a post I would appreciate a link.Thanks
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That's normal, at least every box shows it and it doesn't seem to cause any problems.
It is possible to stop that error by replacing the nic firmware config file. However doing so is quite difficult and potentially risky and as I say it doesn't actually help the function in any way.See: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,20095.msg250430/topicseen.html#msg250430
Steve
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Thanks for the link. I did get it finally up and running just restarted the wizard again and this time it worked. Also got my D-link dir-825 as an AP for wireless connection. Now I will move onto fan modifications to quite them down.
Thanks
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They go fairly quiet once you've turned them down. I don't run them lower than 32 but others have gone lower.
Steve
