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I bought an HP MediaSmart Server a few years ago, but stopped using it after a few months when I moved to a new location. I just tried to set it up and the health led is blinking red. According to the manual, this means that there is a hardware or bios issue.

What now? I only used it a few months and it is gone. I realize that I can remove the disks and save my data but I'm more concerned about the server. It doesn't have a place to plug in a monitor so I can check how to recover it. Is there anything I can do to save it or do I remove the disk drives and junk the remaining shell of the server? Apparently it was a popular product when it was released, but I don't see much else on the web.

Hennes
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user14660
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  • What does the manual say to do? Does the blink pattern indicate a specific problem? Is there a diagnostic tool that came with it or that can be downloaded? – Flimzy May 04 '12 at 04:36
  • @Flimzy the blinking red health light (according to the manual) means that there is a hadrware or bios problem. That's it, unfortunately. – user14660 May 06 '12 at 14:40

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You should open it and see if the backplane has come loose. In my experience with HP servers this happens quite a lot after transport.

Just make sure that it's correctly connected to your motherboard and that it has a close fit to the drive bays.

I do want to remind you that you might void your warranty by opening it.

Lucas Kauffman
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  • @Flimzy I'm quite aware of that, but suggesting to him to just break open the case and not reminding him of the possible warranty issues is just a bit stupid no? I mean the man said himself that there is no other indication in the manual of what might cause this problem. Hence I suggest checking the backplane. In my experience as a sysadmin HP's are prone for backpanes coming loose on serverhardware after transport. Opening a server doesn't void the warranty, but on a consumer piece of hardware it might just do. I do not understand why you see this as a bad thing? – Lucas Kauffman May 06 '12 at 17:38
  • I think suggesting warranty repair is fine. My problem is with the last sentence "Otherwise, I suggest you bring it in for repair." That sounds to me like "If it's under warranty, do X, if not, take it for repair." If what you meant was to suggest taking it in for repair if it is under warranty, that's valid, but should be a comment and not an answer. – Flimzy May 06 '12 at 17:40