BPI M1+ SATA Support

[comp2000]

Good morning

I have a BPI M1 and M1+ currently running an image from https://banana-pi.org/. Everything works, except it's Ubuntu 16.04. Since yesterday, I've been testing the Armbian images, which are great and up-to-date, but none of them recognize the SATA connection on my SSD.

`

fdisk -l

` shows no SATA SSD.

Since I absolutely need this connection, I'm stuck. What am I doing wrong, or where do I need to activate the SATA connection?

The SATA connection is what makes the BPI M1+ unique.

With Ubuntu 16.04, the SATA connection is recognized with both SSD and HDD on the BPI M3.

Can someone please help me? I'm completely lost.

Regards, Henry

[Igor]

Feature regressions are sadly something that happens all the time. There are many variants out there and (part of) Armbian OS is different for every board ... First resolve confusion - do you have M1 (we call it just bananapi) or M3. You mention M3 in the text, while title says M1+. Those are totally different boards.

 

Proceed from older images and find out when this feature stopped working:
https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/archive/
https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/oldarchive/

[comp2000]

For your information, I have a

BPI M1

BPI M1+

BPI M3
All three are currently running Ubuntu 16.04, where SATA works, but it's a very old version. All tests with Armbian were performed using the BPI M1+, although SATA did not work.

[comp2000]

BPI M1+ tested with:

Armbian_23.8.1_Bananapim1plus_jammy

Armbian_24.11.1_Bananapi_noble

Armbian_26.2.0-trunk.342_Bananapi_noble
and the SATA interface doesn't work on any of the three.

Does nobody use a BPI M1+ with an Armbian image where the SATA interface works?

[comp2000]

fdisk -l
Disk /dev/ram0: 4 MiB, 4194304 bytes, 8192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram1: 4 MiB, 4194304 bytes, 8192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram2: 4 MiB, 4194304 bytes, 8192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram3: 4 MiB, 4194304 bytes, 8192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 14.84 GiB, 15931539456 bytes, 31116288 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x4c58faaa

Device         Boot Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1       8192 30801920 30793729 14.7G 83 Linux

Disk /dev/zram0: 483.1 MiB, 506564608 bytes, 123673 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/zram1: 50 MiB, 52428800 bytes, 12800 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Out of desperation, I plugged in an SSD via USB adapter, and it is recognized as:

/dev/sda:

Detected

One might think the SATA connection is defective, but when I boot with the Ubuntu 16.04 image without changing anything, the SATA SSD is recognized! So the SATA connection on the BPI M1+ works, and so does the SSD. It's definitely the Armbian image that's the problem, but where exactly is it?

[Igor]

1 hour ago, comp2000 said:

but where exactly is it?

Probably, my guess, issue with a boot loader - fail to / disabled by mistake power SATA port? We don't have anyone actively maintaining this kind of (10+years) hardware anymore. Support is "community / upstream" maintained "as is". But this forum / community can provide assistance to fix this. I gave a tip - where I think is the problem.

Not working feature on particular hardware is not Armbian problem. This is custom hardware world and our work is tooling https://github.com/armbian/build and best effort hardware maintenance on this principle https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Board-Support-Rules/ If we try to fix everything, everyone would be long burned out ...

[eselarm]

I have this SBC and it is still nice one as it includes LiPo charging/operation and SATA. I changed Armbian OS drastically, such that the raw SD-card as blockdevice/image also runs as KVM on my ROCK3A or RPi4 for example as standard UEFI machine. I have not tested that yet, but done several similar for NanoPi-NEO and some RPi3. Last thing done was use kernel 6.18 as default. Had not tested/connected a SATA recently, so good time to do it now; It works, see below:

root@banlipi:~# lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda           8:0    0 119.2G  0 disk  
├─sda1        8:1    0   512M  0 part  
└─sda2        8:2    0 118.7G  0 part  
mmcblk0     179:0    0  59.6G  0 disk  
├─mmcblk0p1 179:1    0   256M  0 part /boot/efi
├─mmcblk0p2 179:2    0     6G  0 part /.snapshots
│                                     /local/fsroot
│                                     /
├─mmcblk0p3 179:3    0     1G  0 part [SWAP]
└─mmcblk0p4 179:4    0  52.4G  0 part /local/sdata
root@banlipi:~# dmesg | grep ata
[    0.000000] CPU: PIPT / VIPT nonaliasing data cache, VIPT aliasing instruction cache
[    0.000000] Memory policy: Data cache writealloc
[    0.000000] printk: log buffer data + meta data: 131072 + 409600 = 540672 bytes
[    0.045731] Memory: 859656K/1015868K available (11264K kernel code, 1761K rwdata, 9604K rodata, 1024K init, 377K bss, 53644K reserved, 98304K cma-r
eserved, 229436K highmem)
[    0.742930] libata version 3.00 loaded.
[    1.268996] ahci-sunxi 1c18000.sata: supply ahci not found, using dummy regulator
[    1.269351] ahci-sunxi 1c18000.sata: supply phy not found, using dummy regulator
[    1.269470] ahci-sunxi 1c18000.sata: supply target not found, using dummy regulator
[    1.311601] ahci-sunxi 1c18000.sata: controller can't do PMP, turning off CAP_PMP
[    1.311632] ahci-sunxi 1c18000.sata: forcing PORTS_IMPL to 0x1
[    1.311727] ahci-sunxi 1c18000.sata: AHCI vers 0001.0100, 32 command slots, 3 Gbps, platform mode
[    1.311748] ahci-sunxi 1c18000.sata: 1/1 ports implemented (port mask 0x1)
[    1.311762] ahci-sunxi 1c18000.sata: flags: ncq sntf pm led clo only pio slum part ccc  
[    1.316206] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 mmio [mem 0x01c18000-0x01c18fff] port 0x100 irq 34 lpm-pol 0
[    1.630949] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
[    1.632905] ata1.00: ATA-9: SanDisk SDSSDP128G, 1.0.0, max UDMA/133
[    1.632934] ata1.00: 250069680 sectors, multi 1: LBA48 NCQ (depth 32)
[    1.633567] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[   11.515496] systemd[1]: Expecting device dev-disk-by\x2dlabel-sdata.device - /dev/disk/by-label/sdata...
[   22.764093] BTRFS: device label sdata devid 1 transid 36 /dev/mmcblk0p4 (179:4) scanned by mount (378)
[   23.002238] FAT-fs (mmcblk0p1): Volume was not properly unmounted. Some data may be corrupt. Please run fsck.
root@banlipi:~# uname -a
Linux banlipi 6.18.2-edge-sunxi #1 SMP Thu Dec 18 13:03:43 UTC 2025 armv7l GNU/Linux
root@banlipi:~# cd /tmp
root@banlipi:/tmp# mkdir 1 2
root@banlipi:/tmp# mount /dev/sda1 1
root@banlipi:/tmp# mount /dev/sda2 2 -osubvolid=0
root@banlipi:/tmp# ddrescue -f /dev/sda /dev/null
GNU ddrescue 1.29
Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
     ipos:    1731 MB, non-trimmed:        0 B,   current rate:  75366 kB/s
     opos:    1731 MB, non-scraped:        0 B,   average rate:    133 MB/s
non-tried:  126304 MB,  bad-sector:        0 B,     error rate:       0 B/s
  rescued:    1731 MB,   bad areas:          0,       run time:         12s
pct rescued:    1.35%, read errors:          0, remaining time:         15m
                               time since last successful read:         n/a
Copying non-tried blocks... Pass 1 (forwards)^C
  Interrupted by user

 

So I can browse the filesystems on the SSD, seems I had used it for conversion of RPi Trixie Ext4 to Btrfs. Raw speed is fine I see. So I still can use it also with large 3.5inch HDDs, that is what I prepared the surrounding 12V powersupply for.

Edited yesterday at 09:39 PM by eselarm

[eselarm]

2 hours ago, comp2000 said:

BPI M1+ tested with:

Armbian_23.8.1_Bananapim1plus_jammy

Armbian_24.11.1_Bananapi_noble

Armbian_26.2.0-trunk.342_Bananapi_noble
and the SATA interface doesn't work on any of the three.

Does nobody use a BPI M1+ with an Armbian image where the SATA interface works?

Just to note some more: I use none of those images, instead is it in-place upgraded Armbian, originally:

root@banlipi:/tmp# grep VERSION /etc/armbian-image-release
VERSION=23.11.1

Now Trixie:

root@banlipi:/tmp# cat /etc/os-release  
PRETTY_NAME="Armbian 25.8.1 trixie"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="13"
VERSION="13 (trixie)"
VERSION_CODENAME=trixie
DEBIAN_VERSION_FULL=13.0
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.armbian.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forum.armbian.com"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://www.armbian.com/bugs"
ARMBIAN_PRETTY_NAME="Armbian 25.8.1 trixie"

 

I log some stuff to terminal in my backup script; I see:

U-Boot SPL 2024.01-armbian-2024.01-S866c-P7738-Hb9d3-Vf23c-Bb703-R448a (Jun 21 2025 - 02:53:13 +0000)
 

Maybe also good to know, I use extlinux on real HW, grub on KVM

 

root@banlipi:/boot/efi/extlinux# cat extlinux.conf  
menu title Select the kernel variant
DEFAULT default
TIMEOUT 80
LABEL default
       KERNEL  zImage
       INITRD  uInitrd
       FDT  sun7i-a20-bananapi.dtb
       FDTOVERLAYS  sun7i-a20-analog-codec.dtbo
       APPEND root=LABEL=armbianrfs rootwait rw earlyprintk console=ttyS0,115200
 

 

But I am not sure how valid the release info is, will need to look at lists files etc and also run update to it is latest Debian 13.3 I think.

 

I just ran apt update && apt full-upgrade and now it is 'latest debian trixie' but I use apt pinning and I see it is too strict and also an error, so os-release not changed

It is essentially Debian Trixie armhf up to date with manually written U-Boot and manually copied sunxi kernel.

 

Edited yesterday at 12:27 PM by eselarm

[comp2000]

Hello

I've now tested the image:

Armbian_community_26.2.0-trunk.332_Bananapim3_forky_current_6.12.67_minimal.img
on the BPI M3 and I'm happy... SATA works really well. Maybe this will help.

[eselarm]

1 hour ago, comp2000 said:

on the BPI M3 and I'm happy... SATA works really well. Maybe this will help.

What is this topic about? 

M3 - it has Allwinner A83T and no SATA on the SoC but added via USB2  see https://banana-pi.org/en/banana-pi-sbcs/51.html

M1(+) - it has Allwinner A20 and SATA on the SoC see https://banana-pi.org/en/banana-pi-sbcs/10.html

Mine is the latter.

 

[comp2000]

Okay, that explains why the SATA connection works on the BPI M3 but not on the BPI M1+.

So, does anyone know of an image that supports the SATA connection on the BPI M1+ and is newer than Ubuntu 16.04, which is currently running on my BPI M1+?

[eselarm]

Mine is M1, no plus, so no WiFi.

I used the following 2 years ago when I got the SBC:

https://fi.mirror.armbian.de/oldarchive/bananapi/archive/Armbian_23.11.1_Bananapi_bookworm_current_6.1.63.img.txt

 

 

[comp2000]

Good evening.

I spoke too soon. I wrote this:

Armbian_23.11.1_Bananapi_bookworm_current_6.1.63.img

but it doesn't support SATA either.

Even if anyone has another idea or a working BPI M3 with SATA, I'd still be grateful for any suggestions.

[eselarm]

How do you power the bananapi m1?

It has 2 microUSB connectors.