Sata 2 & 3 not recognized/working. halp!

[Zookee]

A newbie here, so apologies if I make this needlessly too long or use the wrong terms.

 

This will be a long story (TL;DR at the bottom) - it all started last week by me adding a new 6TB drive to my baremetal build and connecting it to the sata 2 port on my motherboard (that's the 3rd port and it's only 3Gb/s but that's still plenty for me) and whatever I tried the system didn't recognize the drive attached. I was already thinking that I received a DOA drive. I also thought maybe I don't even have enough power for the drive (using a molex splitter and a sata splitter, I'll get a better PSU).

 

Anyways, I took my trusty external USB3 hdd case and confirmed that the new drive is indeed alive and kicking on my desktop PC.

 

So next thing was to connect the new drive into one of the already used sata ports - and it worked. Of course this got my volume degraded, so first it needed to rebuild itself on a new drive, then adding a new (old)drive - it was doing that for a good 3-4 days lol

I also had to destroy my SSD cache volumes to be able to use the new drive.

 

TLDR I added a drive, connected to the 3Gbs sata ports on my MB and it wasn't recognized. Had to do some silly cable juggling to make it work, but it's still not fine.

 

So my question is: do I have to make a new DSM build every time when I add a new drive or why aren't the two sata slots on my MB recognized?

How should I update my DSM to the latest and be able to use the sata 2 & 3 slots for my HDDS (I'm planning to add another drive)

 

Baremetal system on GA-H81M-S2PV-rev-10 motherboard with i3 and 4gb ram and HBA (8 Port SATA III PCE-e 2.0 x2 Card - SI-PEX40071 ) that has a sata multiplier.

Currently has 5x 6TB WD Red working (connected to sata 0 & 1 and the last three connectors on the HBA). 2 liteon SSDs for read/write cache disconnected

I used tinycore redpill 0.8 and DS918+ DSM 7.1-42661 Update 1

 

Additional question: is there a way to use all 8 ports on my HBA successfully?

 

Edited November 1, 2022 by Zookee
added more info

[Zookee]

Any help is appreciated...

[Zookee]

I've set all my SATA ports to hotswap in bios, but that didn't help

[Peter Suh]

In the past, there was a user who had trouble recognizing 8 disks on the Dell Perc H310 HBA.
And, aren't you using RAID by any chance?
DS918+ is not recommended if you are using RAID on the HBA.
Because, on SMART, the serial of the disk is expressed as SDA/SDB/SDC, etc.

Since it does not recognize the real serial, it can be serious in situations where the disk needs to be replaced.

[Peter Suh]

 

Your SATA controller will probably run using the AHCI driver.
It doesn't seem to be recognized as an HBA like SAS2008.
So the DS918+ and HBA issues may not be relevant.
According to the topic linked below, there was an issue in the past where the multiplier of the Sata controller was not supported in DSM6.
The issue seems to apply to DSM7 as well.

 

 

[Peter Suh]

The 6 port Sata controller of the Marvell 88SE9215 chipset in the link below that I am currently using also uses a multiplier.
So I only use ports 1 to 4. Simultaneous use of the remaining ports 5 and 6 is not possible.

 

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33016481933.html

 

[Zookee]

Thanks @Peter Suh for some insights, but my main issue is why are the 2 sata ports on my motherboard not recognized.

 

As for the HBA - I also only use the first 4 ports and that would leave me with 8 ports total ( 2 + 2 + 4 ), but I'm annoyed that can't use them.

 

I'll run the red pill builder again and try various satamap/sataportmap configurations to try and solve my issue.

 

Oh and my volumes are SHR and i'm not using hardware Raid.

[Peter Suh]

The reason for using the DS918+ is the hardware transcoding of the video?

 

If you absolutely need to keep transcoding, consider switching to the DS920+.

 

If there is no need for a separate HBA driver and only the AHCI driver built into REDPILL is used, the stress of manually configuring SataPortMap can be relieved.

 

The problem that some SATA ports are not visible may be Muxed Ports.

 

This problem can also be solved by DS920+'s Device-Tree Sata mapping.

 

And please try changing to the recently developed TCRP 0.9.

 

There are more improved features in TCRP FRIEND.

[Zookee]

5 hours ago, Peter Suh said:

The reason for using the DS918+ is the hardware transcoding of the video?

 

Yes, I went with DS918+ for that reason, but turned out that I don't use at all transcoding cause my TV plays every file effortlessly.

 

How hard it is to switch my DSM for the DS920+ build without losing any settings and most importantly any data?

[Peter Suh]

When migrating from DS918+ to DS920+, the most important point that can be handled without data loss is “Do you want to migrate?” during the DSM installation migration process. The point is that you should take action only on the inquiry.
If you don't know, "Are you sure you want to format the disk?" You should never take any action on the message.

As long as you are careful with this, your data is unlikely to be lost.

 

Usually, it's easy to just rebuild the loader from TCRP to the DS920+ option.

However, I would like to confirm that your 88SE9705 HBA uses a separate expansion driver.
My guess is that the built-in AHCI driver will be used just like a normal PCIE SATA controller.

 

For sure, I want you to double-check the list of drivers installed on the DS918+ according to the instructions I gave you.

Press the e key within 5 seconds in the TCRP GNU boot menu state as shown below.
As in the capture, add force_junior at the end of the command and continue booting with the F10 key.

 

 

As usual, it does not go to the boot screen of DSM and goes back to the DSM installation and reinstallation stage. Do not install DSM here.

 

You should check the log with a TTYD connection.

Log in as root in a web browser without a password as shown below.

 

http://<youripaddr>:7681/

Please list only the contents of /exts like this.