SATA LINK DOWN (Solved)


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This is pretty new to me I purchased a plus licences because  I went with recommended parts from the suggested list. I am now 1200.00 in the hole system does not recognize one hard drive of the four 3 TB seagate drives I have.  Now down to 3,  messing with it I accidentally fried one outside the swap boxes. 

 

Sata is set AHCI but not one drive is listed in the BIOS. Could I have a bad mother board and how can I tell?  Linux is new to me and now that I am being hounded by Microsoft to upgrade to ten every ten minutes on my other systems I am sorry I never learned it when Dos 3.0 was the big thing.

 

Please help, I fear my next purchase is a gun because its cheaper.

 

 

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Do the drives spin up when you power on? First thing I'd be looking at is the power supply. If they do spin up, it means they're getting power (you can hear them spinning if you listen closely, or feel the vibration of it by gently touching the drive). Are all cables connected correctly? Are you using a backpane? You mention trays so I expect perhaps you are. Try with one drive only, boot up and see if that one drive is detected. If not, refer to my first questions (is it powering up?)

 

Do the cables go directly from the motherboard to the drives? Or is there something in between (eg., the backpane). If there is something in between, try plugging the drive DIRECTLY into the PSU and Motherboard (just do one, you'll know if it works) and see if it then detects. If it does, you can point the finger at the backpane.

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How do you have your hard disks connected?    The syslog appears to show that there are 6 SATA ports, but no disks connected to any of them.    If they are motherboard ports, then you would expect any connected disks to show up at the BIOS level.

 

They are in the Rosewill swap boxes I tried plugging them directly into the MB but even then the BIOS did not see them. This MB has the Intel C220 chipset if that means anything to anyone.  it was the board everyone was talking about in the forum. One of the reasons that I went with it. I seen a couple of post with SATA Link Down but I never seen any solution.  Thought this was going to PNP. :'(

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This MB has the Intel C220 chipset if that means anything to anyone.

Actually, the board has Intel C222 as its North Bridge chipset, but I don't think that matters.

 

I am putting together a system with the X10SL7-F this week and haven't had any issues.

 

What ports are you using on the MB? SATA-3 (white), SATA-2 (black), or SAS (blue).

 

I would start off with just getting one drive recognized wired directly to the board.

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Do the drives spin up when you power on? First thing I'd be looking at is the power supply. If they do spin up, it means they're getting power (you can hear them spinning if you listen closely, or feel the vibration of it by gently touching the drive). Are all cables connected correctly? Are you using a backpane? You mention trays so I expect perhaps you are. Try with one drive only, boot up and see if that one drive is detected. If not, refer to my first questions (is it powering up?)

 

Do the cables go directly from the motherboard to the drives? Or is there something in between (eg., the backpane). If there is something in between, try plugging the drive DIRECTLY into the PSU and Motherboard (just do one, you'll know if it works) and see if it then detects. If it does, you can point the finger at the backpane.

 

 

It was the hard drives two seagates I got off Ebay both bad I took one from another PC and plugged it in and I got it to recognize one. I could not feel them spinning as you suggested.  Thanks Robbie..

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Since you're having drive problems, be sure to use the preclear script on all drives you want to use in unRAID. It is very important that all drives work well since they will all be needed if any of them fail. See search tips in my sig.

 

Well i won't need to do preclear on these drives...Seems I got a bad Rosewell box RSV SATA Cage 34 that felt left out of the Fourth and had a little barbecue of its own.  :-\

 

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Since you're having drive problems, be sure to use the preclear script on all drives you want to use in unRAID. It is very important that all drives work well since they will all be needed if any of them fail. See search tips in my sig.

 

Well i won't need to do preclear on these drives...Seems I got a bad Rosewell box RSV SATA Cage 34 that felt left out of the Fourth and had a little barbecue of its own.  :-\

Even if you have identified a different problem that is not drive related, you should still preclear any drives you intend to use in unRAID to make sure they can be trusted.
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Since you're having drive problems, be sure to use the preclear script on all drives you want to use in unRAID. It is very important that all drives work well since they will all be needed if any of them fail. See search tips in my sig.

 

Well i won't need to do preclear on these drives...Seems I got a bad Rosewell box RSV SATA Cage 34 that felt left out of the Fourth and had a little barbecue of its own.  :-\

 

Well glad at least you located the issue.

 

To everyone who helped in this thread: I just want to say, "Thank you".  Ever since it's beginning, the unRaid Community has been very friendly, helpful, educational, and patient.  Especially with those who are just starting out.  Nothing's perfect, and I've been guilty myself of not being the most "approachable" person here, but in general, the reputation of this being a great forum continues to hold up.  So again, just wanted to recognize the people who make that happen.

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Just to reiterate what trurl said, I would still recommend a pre-clear.

 

Here's the scenario: install a drive that is not pre-cleared. It may last a while (perhaps a few days after its warranty expires if Murphy's Law comes into play - lol!) and then fail. You'll have a bunch of [possibly private] data on it at that point, may be out of warranty, and will have a hard time RMA'ing the drive since so much time has passed, plus you'll have to take your array offline potentially to protect your parity (I wouldn't want to keep running with a failed drive for any length of time!). On the flip-side, you pre-clear it now, which essentially "burns in" the drive... makes sure it's "strong like bull". If it's gonna fail, it's gonna fail, and new drives CAN and DO fail. So this way, you're able to RMA it (return it, get a replacement) BEFORE you put any [private] data on it, and before it even becomes part of your array. So it's no harm done other than the frustration of the lost time.

 

Pre-clearing does not guarantee a drive will not fail. It simply gives you the peace of mind in knowing that it likely won't fail right away, and that you can trust it with your data. Either that, or it will fail during the pre-clear and you can easily return it without compromizing your privacy. It is definitely worth it.

 

Glad you figured out the issue. I knew it! Pain in your backside... back pain... backpane! It makes sense!  :)

 

Tom--cheers. You guys are great so it's only fitting that your community should at least try to live up to that standard.  ;)

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