SATA Controller Cards

[minuzle 0]

12 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

The CPU upgrade should solve the transcoding problem.  However, as I recall, you definitely want to move away from those AOC_SASLP-MV8 cards as they often have problems with newer hardware.  There is a hardware section of this forum.  You should also look at turning on the 'Signatures' of many posters on this forum.  (   Click on your user name at top of page   >>>   Account Settings   >>>    Signature     Then slide on the "View Signature" button.  )  That will show the range of hardware used by many posters and you can often deduce from their posting what they are using that hardware to do.

 

You can also post in the Plex support thread and ask about CPU requirements for transcoding of 4K material.  (I also believe that transcoding can be off-loaded to some GPU's which is a real plus!)

Thank you for the reply!

[anschluss 0]

On 7/30/2019 at 7:07 PM, JorgeB said:

This one should work with the standard AHCI driver, though usually don't work very well because of the port multipliers.

 

That is indeed the case. Here's my story of trying the

 

"PCIe 2.0 X4 to SATA III 6-Port Adapter Card (ASM Chipset) for IPFS Mining - Model SU-SA3006.V1"

 

card in my new server. It first seemed to "work" as far as it was capable of detecting and reading from disks. However, as soon as I tried to write to the array, it started producing an ever more frequent series of errors which made me believe that I had bad disks. This is just a small excerpt of the logs:

 

Jan 15 02:28:33 pstore kernel: ata7.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
Jan 15 02:28:33 pstore kernel: ata7.00: failed command: FLUSH CACHE EXT
Jan 15 02:28:33 pstore kernel: ata7.00: cmd ea/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 18
Jan 15 02:28:33 pstore kernel:         res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
Jan 15 02:28:33 pstore kernel: ata7.00: status: { DRDY }
Jan 15 02:28:33 pstore kernel: ata7: hard resetting link
Jan 15 02:28:34 pstore kernel: ata7: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
Jan 15 02:28:39 pstore kernel: ata7.00: qc timeout (cmd 0x27)
Jan 15 02:28:39 pstore kernel: ata7.00: failed to read native max address (err_mask=0x4)
Jan 15 02:28:39 pstore kernel: ata7.00: HPA support seems broken, skipping HPA handling
Jan 15 02:28:39 pstore kernel: ata7.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
Jan 15 02:28:39 pstore kernel: ata7: hard resetting link
Jan 15 02:28:39 pstore kernel: ata7: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
Jan 15 02:28:45 pstore kernel: ata7.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xef)
Jan 15 02:28:45 pstore kernel: ata7.00: failed to enable AA (error_mask=0x4)
Jan 15 02:28:45 pstore kernel: ata7.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
Jan 15 02:28:45 pstore kernel: ata7: limiting SATA link speed to 3.0 Gbps
Jan 15 02:28:45 pstore kernel: ata7: hard resetting link
Jan 15 02:28:45 pstore kernel: ata7: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 320)
Jan 15 02:29:00 pstore kernel: ata7.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xef)
Jan 15 02:29:00 pstore kernel: ata7.00: failed to set xfermode (err_mask=0x4)
Jan 15 02:29:00 pstore kernel: ata7.00: disabled
Jan 15 02:29:01 pstore kernel: ata7: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 320)
Jan 15 02:29:01 pstore kernel: ata7: EH complete
Jan 15 02:29:01 pstore kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#20 UNKNOWN(0x2003) Result: hostbyte=0x04 driverbyte=0x00
Jan 15 02:29:01 pstore kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#20 CDB: opcode=0x88 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 08 00 00
Jan 15 02:29:01 pstore kernel: print_req_error: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 64
Jan 15 02:29:01 pstore kernel: md: disk1 read error, sector=0
Jan 15 02:29:01 pstore kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#22 UNKNOWN(0x2003) Result: hostbyte=0x04 driverbyte=0x00
Jan 15 02:29:01 pstore kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#22 CDB: opcode=0x35 35 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Jan 15 02:29:01 pstore kernel: print_req_error: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 2930303272
Jan 15 02:29:01 pstore kernel: md: disk1 write error, sector=2930303208
Jan 15 02:29:01 pstore kernel: print_req_error: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 2930303264

 

After replacing all cables and two drives to no avail, I remembered that I had another cheap multiport SATA card lying around, and lo and behold: no more errors! The present card is a PCE8SAT-M01 (around $20 from Aliexpress) which I thought would be even crappier than the 6-port. It only has one PCIe lane so I wasn't surprised that it only transfers around 430 MB/sec (six "old"/PMR WD Red drives) - but at least it does that without conking out!

 

 

If you're interested in some technical background, I found an excellent article on its performance:

 

8 Port SATA on a PCIE 1x lane

 

While I'm waiting for a card with a bit more "oomph", this cheap controller is serving me well to keep the server running until then.

 

 

[Taza 0]

Hey I've got a gigabyte z390 board with an i9 and it seems that one of the on board sata ports has died. I changed cables and bought  new drive and gets to about 12-14% of copying back from the parity and it fails and then drive goes to disabled.  

 

I'm after a 6 to 8 port sata card. Still new to this just after a card I can just plug in and go. 

 

Any help be appreciated 

 

Cheers

[ChatNoir 154]

This should cover it :