TS-831X Slot #3 has become intermittent

[BlueSky]

I think I have a dying NAS on my hands and after reaching out to QNAP and finding that the NAS is EOL and they have no parts for “out of warranty repairs” I decided to see if you all have any ideas.

After turning the NAS on from a cold start, after a couple of minutes of successful operation, the slot will intermittently drop any mechanical hard drive either by completely not detecting a drive that was in the bay (no red or green activity) lights or flagging disk I/O errors. No such errors occur when I put a 2.5" SSD in the slot which leads me to believe that the electronics powering the slot are heat and/or load sensitive because the SSD draws considerably less power than does a mechanical drive which allows the slot to continue to function.

This sounds suspiciously like the power MOSFET issue that I experienced in an old TS-879 PRO that I had and was able to get going by successfully jumpering around the MOSFET effectively applying power to the slot all the time.

As I really dislike throwing equipment away that is potentially fixable, I wonder if anyone has had any experience with trying to keep a TS-831X alive and, if so, do you know if the back plane electronics are the same as in the TS-831X or are you aware of any source of repair parts for these machines?

Thanks much!

[dolbyman]

The old forum had a large topic about these issues and I seem to remember x31 units being part of it.

I remember the easy solution was to bridge out the mosfet to bring back stable power, but I do not have screenshots to point you to the right one (a fine tipped multimeter should find it for you)

[BlueSky]

Yes, there was a lot of good stuff in the old forum that never made it across. I may have pictures of the TS-879 I bridged to restore stable power to the offending slot.

Unfortunately, however, I no longer have the eyesight of the steady hands of a surgeon that I remember was a necessary part of the skill set.

If I find the pictures I took, I’ll keep them just in case anyone else may need them in the future.

I found a couple of pictures. The “after repair” pic is pretty bad. I’ll take this box apart and see if I find the same parts inside.