Rock64 is unreliable after 3 years of service - power problem?

[ReleaseTheGeese]

Greetings all,

I have a Rock64 that I was using to self-host some services (namely Nextcloud).

It was powered on 24/7 for the best part of 3 years. It was connected by my router by ethernet. The only other connection was an external hard drive - the HDD had its own power supply so wouldn't have a high draw from the R64.

Around a year and a half into service, the USB 3.0 port that had the HDD connected stopped working. No matter, I just plugged it into one of the USB 2.0 ports and didn't experience any loss in performance.

Now it seems the whole unit is suffering from something. The ethernet connection shows on my router and I can ping the box, but as soon as I try SSH I am disconnected. I can begin a HTTP request but Apache fails with an internal server error message. When I power it on and view the console output on a monitor, I can login using a keyboard and nothing seems amiss in the OS (Armbian).

That said, if I connect anything to USB after the unit is powered on, it immediately reboots.

Something isn't right here. I suspect power related, but I'm not sure. These problems came all at once.

Would appreciate any help or suggestions.
Thanks, RTG.

[arunkhan]

I have experienced a similar problem with my 2 boards, except that they were lying unused for more than a year. The boards would not boot. I took out the SD cards and re-imaged the OS with a newer version of Debian. Both boards now boot but if I leave them OFF for a day or longer, they seem to suffer from brain damage i.e. they stop booting (even with the newer image of Debian)..