I have a MSI Mainboard with 6 onboard SATA, but that was not enough so a year ago I purchased a very cheap SATA Controller for PCIe x1 with 2 additional ports. Used that with Windows without any problems. This is the controller in question (some no name stuff I presume, cost like 10 euros): http://www.amazon.de/PCI-Express-Controller-Schnittstellenkarte-Laufwerke-ASMEDIA/dp/B00BFU5HL6/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2Y0NATCQPS7FY&coliid=I3J7CVFBORGK7P

It says Chipset  ASMEDIA ASM1061 - maybe that's incompatible?

EDIT: According to this thread it should work: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=18522.0

weird...

 

Now I started my unRaid server with only a couple of HDDs. I wanted to add a Cache drive next so I connected one HDD to this external  but now unRaid won't boot. There is no error message, the system just stops, no response to USB keyboard what so ever. The last line I can read are something about ACPI or so - nothing HDD related. I can't scroll up, since it's not responding.

 

I shut down the PC, removed the SATA cable and unRaid boots just fine. Then I connected the SATA cable while the PC running and voila, the HDD was found as sdh - I could even format it and use it as cache drive (well I haven't actually tried to copy stuff to it yet, but unRaid could format it). I doubt that the HDD is at fault since it worked fine in another PC before (7 years old WD 500GB, SMART status all fine) - I rather think the SATA Controller is at fault here. But how can I debug something like this when I don't have any error messages at boot time?

 

I attached a syslog where I started the server without the HDD connected to the controller and at 13:24:10 I connected it (the WDC_WD5000AAKS-65TMA0_WD-WCAPW2493283)

 

I can't find anything in the syslog, I would have liked to verify the chipset and firmware version but unRaid doesn't have lshw or lspci - any ideas what I can try to print the device info?

 

EDIT: got lspci to work, needed to download a couple of packages: 

pciutils-3.2.0-i486-1.txz

kmod-15-i486-1.txz

aaa_elflibs-14.1-i486-3.txz

 

output is as follows:

01:00.0 SATA controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1062 Serial ATA Controller (rev 01)

(prog-if 01 [AHCI 1.0])

        Subsystem: ASMedia Technology Inc. Device 1060

        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 47

        I/O ports at e050

        I/O ports at e040

        I/O ports at e030

        I/O ports at e020

        I/O ports at e000

        Memory at fe510000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)

        Expansion ROM at fe500000 [disabled]

        Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-

        Capabilities: [78] Power Management version 3

        Capabilities: [80] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00

        Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel

        Kernel driver in use: ahci

        Kernel modules: ahci

 

 

No Firmware entry though

syslog-20140324-152145.zip

Mar 24 13:25:44 Tower login[11255]: ROOT LOGIN  on '/dev/pts/0' from 'Falcon-Win8.fritz.box'
Mar 24 13:26:27 Tower init: Trying to re-exec init
Mar 24 13:27:01 Tower crond[1141]: exit status 1 from user root /usr/lib/sa/sa1 1 1 & 1>/dev/null 2>&1 
Mar 24 13:27:01 Tower kernel: crond[13048]: segfault at 4001e51c ip 4001e51c sp bfd1e448 error 15 in ld-2.11.1.so[4001e000+1000]
Mar 24 13:27:13 Tower ntfs-3g[13202]: Version 2013.1.13 integrated FUSE 27 
Mar 24 13:27:13 Tower ntfs-3g[13202]: Mounted /dev/sde2 (Read-Only, label "New Volume", NTFS 3.1) 
Mar 24 13:27:13 Tower ntfs-3g[13202]: Cmdline options: ro,umask=111,dmask=000 
Mar 24 13:27:13 Tower ntfs-3g[13202]: Mount options: ro,allow_other,nonempty,relatime,default_permissions,fsname=/dev/sde2,blkdev,blksize=4096 
Mar 24 13:27:13 Tower ntfs-3g[13202]: Global ownership and permissions enforced, configuration type 1 
Mar 24 13:28:01 Tower crond[1141]: exit status 1 from user root /usr/lib/sa/sa1 1 1 & 1>/dev/null 2>&1 

 

What happened at 13:25?  This looks like an incompatible or misconfigured add-on. Disable all add-ons for further testing.

Yeah I was wondering about that too. I only have Dynamix installed (and most of it's plugins) - nothing else.

 

But aside from that, during boot I don't even get to that stage. I did a little more digging and apparently those SATA Controllers come with different firmware - maybe I'm using a weird one. It's not like it doesn't work at all, since it works when I connect the disk during runtime.

 

I'm intrigued to test out Beta 6 too to see if that changes anything. Maybe I will, with another USB Stick. But I already ordered another 10$ SATA Controller with another chipset too.

I've been using a Velocity Solo x1 which has the Asmedia 1061 chipset and it's been working fine for me under unRAID 5.0.5

Yeah, it should work. I have no idea what the problem is. I will try booting with unRaid 6 Beta later.

I tested unRaid 6, no Luck. Crashes at exactly the same message. I then tried to connect a different HDD. One that was NTFS formatted, same thing happened. I connected one of the Array drives and this time it booted a bit further, then crash again.

I guess there is just an incompatibility between my Mainboard and this SATA controller.

 

Damn, if I had more money I really would like to have a different board, with all SATA ports directly on the board since I hate extension or raid cards - always trouble and quite expensive.

 

I have ordered another controller, maybe that one will work. If not I have a problem.

Exchanged the SATA controller to another one, also just 9 bucks with 2 Ports but this time a RAID Chip, JMB363. boots fine and seems to work. hooray