[ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)]

A few updates on my testing:

• As there did not seem to be a cable problem, I swapped the Sata port 1 and 2 cables back to match the wiki build document. Note: the UPS battery is not connected.
• I did attempt to downgrade the Seagate Barracuda SSD 120 1TB to 3.1 specifications. The downgrade failed on an error so that avenue has been abandoned.
• I acquired a new Samsung SSD 860  EVO 1 TB hoping that it works better than the Cuda 120 SSD.
• I retested 5 different drives  on each Sata port.  The drives were

1.  WD RED 10TB #2 (two Red 10TB drives tested are labeled #2 and #3, just the number on the drive rail)
2. Samsung SSD 86 EVO - 1 TB
3. SanDisk Extreme II SSD - 240GB
4. Seagate Barracuda SSD 120 - 1TB
5. WD RED 10TB #3

• For each Sata port, the a single drive was installed with a power on boot to determine whether the drive was visible/recognized after the kernel was started.
  
  port 1:    recognized:  2, 5                                                           not recognized: 1, 3, 4
  port 2:    recognized:  1, 3                                                           not recognized: 2, 4, 5
  port 3:    recognized:  1, 3                                                           not recognized: 2, 4, 5
  port 4:    recognized:  1*, 2*, 3, 5                                                 not recognized:  4
  port 5:    recognized:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5                                               not recognized:
  
  * -  very slow boot, many resets, recognized at 3.0Gbps
   
• An observation:  during the u-boot process there is a pause just after "Net:   eth0: ethernet@fe300000" and before "scanning bus for devices..." of about 10-12 seconds  With a drive installed in Sata ports 3, 4, 5, front panel LED lights up almost immediately after "Net:   eth0: ethernet@fe300000" is displayed. If the LED is not on, the drive will not be recognized. On Sata port 1 and 2, there is a 10-12 second pause after "Net:   eth0: ethernet@fe300000" is displayed and then the bus scan. I'm assuming this is a staggered power start up, Sata ports 3, 4, 5 and then Sata port 1, 2. Just visually, it seemed more random on port 1 or 2 whether a device has time to complete power up before the bus scan. 
   
• I'm looking for a 3 drive configuration; a 1 TB SSD  with the two WD RED 10 TB HDD. As the Cuda SSD 120 only seems to be recognized in port 5,  I'll proceed with the Samsung SSD 860 EVO. But what ports? Ports 4 and 5 seem the most reliable so I'm putting the HDDs on these ports. My preference was to have the SSD on port 1 but I did experience a couple of times where the SSD wasn't recognized in this 3 drive configuration. So, I'm testing with the SSD on port 3 and the HDDs on port 4 and 5.  So  far, this is looking to be the best configuration. It's odd that the SSD was not recognized on port 3 during the single drive tests but seems stable with three drives.
   

Jim     

[ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)]

On 11/20/2020 at 12:46 PM, TRS-80 said:

You installed Debian?  Or Armbian?

 

I installed Debian/Armbian 5.8 image from Kobol wiki:  Armbian_20.08.21_Helios64_buster_current_5.8.17.img.xz

 

On 11/20/2020 at 3:35 AM, gprovost said:

It could be a faulty HDD harness cable.

 

Could you try to swap cables connected to SATA port 1 to SATA port 2 on the board. Then check if HDD slot 1 still doesn't work and HDD slot 2 still works.

This way we can confirm it's a wire issue.

 

I swapped the cables for Sata 1 and Sata 2 ports. The SSD drive was not recognized on either port. So, back to basics. Using a single WD Red 10TB HHD (factory fresh: no portioning, no formatting), I tested each slot.  The WD HHD was recognized on all 5 Sata ports.  So, not a cable problem.  Repeating the process with the Seagate Barracuda SSD 120 drive (factory fresh), the SSD is not visible on ports 1, 2, 3, and 4 but is visible on Sata port 5.  With a 2nd factory fresh Seagate Barracuda SSD 120 drive, I repeated the process. Again only visible on Sata port 5.  Using a old used SanDisk SDSSDXP240G SSD, I repeated the process on port 1 to 4 and it was visible on all ports. 

 

So, it seems that there is an issue with Seagate Barracuda SSD 120 drives being only visible on Sata port 5, with the shortest cable length.  But, could I just have 2 bad drives? So, I connected one of the SSDs to a USB bridge to test against my Windows desktop.  I could see the drive so I partitioned and formatted the drive.  Seems to be OK. So I moved the SSD back to the Helios64 (don't remember what port) and it was now visible but in a  degraded 3Gbps link speed. So, I removed the Windows partitions and relabeled and partitioned the drive. Now on Sata port 1, I can see drive with the following messages being generated on boot:

 

Spoiler

[    3.051038] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xfa010000 port 0xfa010100 irq 238
[    3.051047] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xfa010000 port 0xfa010180 irq 239
[    3.051055] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xfa010000 port 0xfa010200 irq 240
[    3.051063] ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xfa010000 port 0xfa010280 irq 241
[    3.051071] ata5: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xfa010000 port 0xfa010300 irq 242
[    3.525038] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[    3.525282] ata1.00: ATA-10: Seagate BarraCuda 120 SSD ZA1000CM10003, STRSD013, max UDMA/133
[    3.525293] ata1.00: 1953525168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 32), AA
[    3.525909] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[    3.557041] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x10 SErr 0x1c00001 action 0x0
[    3.557051] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x0c000000
[    3.557064] ata1: SError: { RecovData Handshk LinkSeq TrStaTrns }
[    3.585013] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x80 SErr 0x1c00001 action 0x0
[    3.585021] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x0c000000
[    3.585031] ata1: SError: { RecovData Handshk LinkSeq TrStaTrns }
[    3.843423] ata2: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[    4.155443] ata3: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[    4.629032] ata4: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[    4.629865] ata4.00: ATA-8: SanDisk SDSSDXP240G, R1311, max UDMA/133
[    4.629876] ata4.00: 468862128 sectors, multi 1: LBA48 NCQ (depth 32), AA
[    4.630718] ata4.00: configured for UDMA/133
[    5.109052] ata5: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[    5.109303] ata5.00: ATA-10: Seagate BarraCuda 120 SSD ZA1000CM10003, STRSD013, max UDMA/133
[    5.109315] ata5.00: 1953525168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 32), AA
[    5.109951] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/133
[    5.793226] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x4000 SErr 0x1c00001 action 0x0
[    5.793239] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x0c000000
[    5.793252] ata1: SError: { RecovData Handshk LinkSeq TrStaTrns }
[    5.845128] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x400 SErr 0x1c00001 action 0x0
[    5.845140] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x08000000
[    5.845153] ata1: SError: { RecovData Handshk LinkSeq TrStaTrns }
[   37.885067] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x2080 SErr 0x1c00001 action 0x6 frozen
[   37.885079] ata1.00: irq_stat 0x0c000000
[   37.885091] ata1: SError: { RecovData Handshk LinkSeq TrStaTrns }
[   37.885107] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED
[   37.885132] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:38:80:67:70/00:00:74:00:00/40 tag 7 ncq dma 4096 in
[   37.885140] ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
[   37.885159] ata1: hard resetting link
[   38.361025] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[   38.361038] ata1.00: link online but device misclassified
[   43.489056] ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
[   43.489076] ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
[   43.489085] ata1.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
[   43.489097] ata1: hard resetting link
[   43.965022] ata1: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[   43.968192] ata1: illegal qc_active transition (00000000->00000001)
[   43.968218] ata1.00: failed to read native max address (err_mask=0x100)
[   43.968227] ata1.00: HPA support seems broken, skipping HPA handling
[   43.968235] ata1.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
[   43.968245] ata1: limiting SATA link speed to 3.0 Gbps
[   49.121036] ata1: hard resetting link
[   49.597020] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 320)
[   49.600814] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[   49.600831] ata1.00: device reported invalid CHS sector 0
[   49.601109] ata1: EH complete

 

 

At least, the Cuda 120 SSD is being recognized.

 

One Seagate troubleshooting article indicates:

 

Quote

"The BarraCuda SSD is compliant with the SATA 3.2 specification.  If your computer only supports the SATA 3.1 specification, sometimes the BarraCuda SSD is not detected during startup of your computer.  This should be an intermittent issue, and if you try a few times, the computer should still boot."

 

Since, the old Sandisk SSD worked on port 1-4, I might try downgrading the Cuda 120 SSD to the 3.1 specs (if I can find the hardware in my collection of bits).

 

So, some progress. But, with all the drive plugging/unplugging, my Helios64 box has lots of pink plastic shavings from the drive rails. 

 

Jim 

 

 

[ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)]

I just received my Helios64 system and built it today. The build included 3 drives, a SSD in port 1 and two HHD's on port 2 and 3. After the build, I installed Debian Kernel: 5.8 on an micro SD card. The system booted but only showed the drives in port 2 and 3. I have moved the drive in port 1 to port 4, rebooted and the SSD drive shows up. Also, a HDD in port 1 does not show up: no blue Light on the front panel and not visible in "fdisk -l" .  The output from ' dmesg | grep "ata" ' results in:

 

Spoiler

[    0.000000] Memory: 3742212K/4061184K available (14460K kernel code, 2114K rwdata, 5920K rodata, 4160K init, 572K bss, 187900K reserved, 131072K cma-reserved)
[    0.017471] CPU features: detected: ARM errata 1165522, 1319367, or 1530923
[    1.381721] libata version 3.00 loaded.
[    2.753910] dwmmc_rockchip fe320000.mmc: DW MMC controller at irq 28,32 bit host data width,256 deep fifo
[    3.039365] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xfa010000 port 0xfa010100 irq 238
[    3.039374] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xfa010000 port 0xfa010180 irq 239
[    3.039382] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xfa010000 port 0xfa010200 irq 240
[    3.039390] ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xfa010000 port 0xfa010280 irq 241
[    3.039397] ata5: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xfa010000 port 0xfa010300 irq 242
[    3.351430] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[    4.073010] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[    4.785020] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[    5.501021] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[    6.213013] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[    6.925015] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[    7.637014] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[    8.353013] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[    9.065013] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[    9.777013] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   10.493013] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   11.205013] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   11.917013] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   12.629013] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   13.345013] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   13.360992] ata2: softreset failed (device not ready)
[   14.057013] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   14.769013] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   15.213009] ata2: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[   15.279535] ata2.00: ATA-9: WDC WD100EFAX-68LHPN0, 83.H0A83, max UDMA/133
[   15.279547] ata2.00: 19532873728 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 32), AA
[   15.291821] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133
[   15.485018] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   15.768996] ata3: SATA link up 6.0 Gbps (SStatus 133 SControl 300)
[   15.775720] ata3.00: ATA-9: WDC WD100EFAX-68LHPN0, 83.H0A83, max UDMA/133
[   15.775731] ata3.00: 19532873728 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 32), AA
[   15.788073] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133
[   16.103595] ata4: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   16.197014] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   16.415602] ata5: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
[   16.921041] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)

 

 

with the 'ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)' message repeating at least every second with a drive on Sata port 1.  

 

I dismantled the system to unplug and replug the Sata port 1 cable but no change. 

 

Any help to resolve my problem is appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Jim