My first build went well and I am about 2 hours from completing the parity build. I have been following the wiki configuration tutorial and did preclear, etc. One thing I ran into while following the configuration tutorial was at the step Verifying Hard Drives are Detected. When I did "dmesg|grep SATA|grep link" I got:

ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)

ata3: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

ata4: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)

 

All of these are on the mobo. ata1 is not connected and I was planning to save it for cache.

 

What concerns me is that ata2 is showing 1.5Gbps. Not only that but while poking around with unMenu and myMain I figured out that I have put the parity drive on that SATA port:

Filtered syslog (disk='parity' , device='sda')

Legend ==> Errors Minor Issues Lime Tech unRAID engine System Drive related Network Logins Misc Other emhttp RoutineApr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel: scsi2 : ahci (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel: ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xf9f7a000 port 0xf9f7a180 irq 26 (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel: ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300) (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel: ata2.00: ATA-8: ST2000DL003-9VT166, CC32, max UDMA/133 (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel: ata2.00: 3907029168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32) (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel: ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133 (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel: scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      ST2000DL003-9VT1 CC32 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5 (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 3907029168 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 TB/1.81 TiB) (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00 (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel:  sda: (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:40 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:17:41 Tower emhttp: pci-0000:00:0b.0-scsi-1:0:0:0 host2 (sda) ST2000DL003-9VT166_5YD1A5DL (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:40:09 Tower kernel: md: import disk0: [8,0] (sda) ST2000DL003-9VT1 5YD1A5DL size: 1953514552 (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:40:13 Tower kernel: md: import disk0: [8,0] (sda) ST2000DL003-9VT1 5YD1A5DL size: 1953514552 (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:40:16 Tower kernel: md: import disk0: [8,0] (sda) ST2000DL003-9VT1 5YD1A5DL size: 1953514552 (Drive related)
Apr  8 00:49:21 Tower kernel:  sda: unknown partition table (Drive related)
Apr  8 14:09:58 Tower kernel:  sda: sda1 (Drive related)
Apr  9 11:21:33 Tower preclear_disk-diff[27128]: == invoked as: ./preclear_disk.sh /dev/sda (Misc)
Apr  9 11:21:33 Tower preclear_disk-diff[27128]: == Disk /dev/sda has been successfully precleared (Misc)
Apr  9 11:21:33 Tower preclear_disk-diff[27128]: ** Changed attributes in files: /tmp/smart_start_sda  /tmp/smart_finish_sda (Misc)
Apr  9 11:21:33 Tower preclear_disk-diff[27128]: == S.M.A.R.T Initial Report for /dev/sda  (Misc)
Apr  9 11:21:33 Tower preclear_disk-diff[27128]: Disk: /dev/sda (Misc)
Apr  9 11:21:33 Tower preclear_disk-diff[27128]: == S.M.A.R.T Final Report for /dev/sda  (Misc)
Apr  9 11:21:33 Tower preclear_disk-diff[27128]: Disk: /dev/sda (Misc)
Apr  9 12:17:18 Tower kernel: md: import disk0: [8,0] (sda) ST2000DL003-9VT1 5YD1A5DL size: 1953514552 (Drive related)
Apr  9 12:17:24 Tower kernel: md: import disk0: [8,0] (sda) ST2000DL003-9VT1 5YD1A5DL size: 1953514552 (Drive related)
Apr  9 12:17:27 Tower kernel: md: import disk0: [8,0] (sda) ST2000DL003-9VT1 5YD1A5DL size: 1953514552 (Drive related)
Apr  9 12:19:13 Tower emhttp: shcmd (35): /usr/local/sbin/set_ncq sda 1 >/dev/null (Drive related)
Apr  9 12:19:13 Tower emhttp: writing mbr on disk 0 (/dev/sda) with partition 1 offset 64 (Drive related)
Apr  9 12:19:13 Tower emhttp: re-reading /dev/sda partition table (Drive related)
Apr  9 12:19:13 Tower kernel:  sda: sda1 (Drive related)

Why is this port slow? Should I be concerned about this? I just used some cables I already had for my build but they look identical. Could the cable be the problem? Something in the BIOS?

 

Thanks for your attention.

It could be the cable, but 1.5GBps is faster than the drive can be read or written so it's nothing to worry about. The faster speed is only needed if you use a port splitter.