SATA Controllers not working

[Frank1940]

I recently decided to convert the data disk formatting on my Media server from reiserfs to XFS.  Since I was using all six MB SATA ports for the current array drives it became necessary to use the StarTech.com 4 Port PEXSAT34RH  (Marvell 88SE9230 chip set) that I had installed in the server about year ago and never used.  (That was probably a big mistake!)  The server also uses Monoprice hot-swap drive enclosures  to hold the drives.  (I don't hot swap but they do allow one to change drives without mucking with the connections.)  

 

I shutdown the server, inserted a 3TB WD Red drive  into one of the three extra enclosures and restart the server.  (This particular drive has over 240 hours on it accumulated while running tests on the preclear plugin so I know that it is good!)  The Drive was not detected nor reported as a unassigned drive!  I tried another enclosure-- same thing.  I next install an old IOcrest PCI controller using a SIL 3114 Chip.  Same result.  Tried another enclosure, no difference. 

 

I tried enable interrupt 19 for each cards. I tried appending iommu=pt in syslinux configuration file for the IOcrest card without result. 

 

The system uses a Asus ATX DDR4 Motherboard H170-PRO/CSM, Intel 3.70 GHz Core i3-6100 CPU, and has 8GB RAM.

 

Does anyone have any thoughts as to what might be the problem and its solution.  I have attached the diagnostics file taken when the IOcrest card was in the server. 

 

elsie1-diagnostics-20170421-1300.zip

[Frank1940]

Some more bits of information.  As the system boots up, a window displays a notice to press the F7 (As I recall) or Ctrl-?  to enter the BIOS for the IOcrest card.  Pressing that key results in an error message that basically says 'No BIOS found'.  And I did turn off the VT-d in the MB BIOS when I upgraded the MB. 

Edited April 21, 2017 by Frank1940

[JorgeB]

Controller is not being detect by Linux, so it's not unRAID, try it in a different slot or different PC, if still nothing it can be a bad controller.

[Frank1940]

But two bad controller cards?  I can understand that you can only give an opinion on the IOcrest card since that it the one that I submitted the diagnostics file for.  I do have the Test Bed server that I can try both cards in to see if either one will work there.  I will try that tomorrow.  This next time, I will get Diagnostics for both if they fail!  Can you think of any reason not to install both card at once to save a bit of time.  One is a PCI and the other is PCIe...

[JorgeB]

I though the Marvell is the one not working, the Sil is being detected but link is down, I assumed no disks connected.

[JorgeB]

Reread your post, and I see you tried the disk on the SIL, that's a sata1 controller, not 100% sure, but almost sure a sata3 WD red will only work on a sata3 or sata2 controller, it wont work on sata1.

[Frank1940]

Thanks, Johnnie, for the information on the SIL.  I will have to consign that controller to the junk pile.  (Or I will pull it out again and try to use it!    ) 

 

"Tomorrow is another day..."

[Frank1940]

I had a chance this morning to run a few experiments. Interesting results.  I opened up the Test Bed server and found a SYBA SD2PEX-2IR  SATA card in it.  This board contain the SiL 3132 chip on it and the card is spec'ed as 1-lane 2.5 Gb/s PCI Express card.   Plugging in the WD Red Drive into the drive enclosure and starting the server resulted in the drive being found as 'unassigned'.  (There will be one thing that I will be leaving out in all of the following is that I ALWAYS powerdown the server before making any changes to the physical hardware!) 

 

I tried inserting the Marvell card (leaving the SYBA card installed)  and using a port on that card  to see what happened.  The WD Red drive was not detected.  Interesting...

 

I then removed the SYBA card and restarted again.  Success!  The WD Red drive was now detected and listed as unassigned. I am now in the process of preclearing that drive again.  I want to be sure that there are not any issues with the Marvell  controller card!  IF that is successful, I plan on swapping both the hard drives and Flash Boot drives from the Test Bed and Media servers. (The hardware configurations are virtually identical...)  

 

A couple of observations:

 

(1) For some reason having the two SATA cards installed resulted in some type of conflict.  I am not going to investigate this as I have no need for that many sata ports in my current setup. 

 

(2)  In reading deep (on page 1-10) into the Motherboard manual for the ASUS H170-PRO it says that "has two PCI Express 3.0 x 16 slots (x16 + x4 mode) that support PCI Express 3.0 x16 graphics cards".  (The spec sheets don't say this!)  So apparently this particular ASUS motherboard does not support anything but graphics cards in those slots.  Of course, all of the other PCI Express slots are x1 slots!  I will being trying the SYBA card in this MB at some time in the future. 

Edited April 22, 2017 by Frank1940
Clarification of observation 1