only two of four sata drives slots are being recognized

[rcrh]

So I'm in the middle of converting my HP Mediasmart server from Windows Home Server to Amahi and I've fallen into what could be a death blow. Amahi (or Fedora) only recognizes my sata drives in two of the four slots in my server. I've tried different drives in each of the slots and it seems that only the first & third slots (counting from the bottom) are being recognized.

I did the initial install following the instructions found here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/63253/upgrade- ... ith-amahi/

which involved installing Amahi in a separate box, tweaking the install, and then moving the drive to the mediasmart server. That box only had two drives in it (the system drive & a DVD drive). Could that been the issue?

I'm quite new to Linux and Amahi so I'm not really sure where to turn. All four drives were working under WHS so I don't think this is a hardware issue.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[radioz]

That's strange.
What is the mfr/model of your motherboard?

With the drives all plugged in, open up a terminal and try:

cat /proc/scsi/scsi

Post the output.

[rcrh]

here's what I get.

[root@localhost ~]# cat /proc/scsi/scsi
Attached devices:
Host: scsi2 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: ATA Model: ST32000542AS Rev: CC34
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
Host: scsi4 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: SMI Model: USB DISK Rev: 1100
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Host: scsi3 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: ATA Model: ST32000542AS Rev: CC34
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
[root@localhost ~]#

The first and the third are the drives I have working and I believe the 2nd one is some sort of SSD that HP has in there. The third SCSI doesn't show up.

Anything else you can suggest?
Thanks for spending time on this.
Richard.

[radioz]

They sure don't show up there!

What is the manufacturer / model of your motherboard?

I would Google for sata problems with that motherboard.

Hmm. How about checking for SATA settings in your bios. I have no idea what might be wrong, but its worth a try. Make sure all sata ports are enabled?

[rcrh]

They sure don't show up there!

What is the manufacturer / model of your motherboard?

I would Google for sata problems with that motherboard.

Hmm. How about checking for SATA settings in your bios. I have no idea what might be wrong, but its worth a try. Make sure all sata ports are enabled?

Well, it looks like I've got some difficult research ahead of me. As I said in my original post, the hardware is an HP Mediasmart server. It was made to serve as a headless WHS box. However, I'm pretty sure that it isn't a bios setting as the same four drives were working when I was running WHS on it.

Thanks again.

[billium]

I've had the problem a few times since building my Amahi server, and every time it ended up being a bad SATA cable. I know it sounds strange and doesn't happen very often, but it's happened three times to me. The first time was especially peculiar, and I did some extensive testing of the cable on all four of HDD's, and on every single one the cable worked with end A in the HDD and end B in the raid card, and not vice versa. (A, B just to signify flipping it around, there isn't actually an A and B end to the cable.) I replaced the cable afterwards anyway, cause I didn't like that. The two other times, it just ended up being a bad cable. To find that sort of thing is always frustrating though because it's usually the last thing you check, but it's worth checking.

I would recommend making a little diagram of your drives as they are physically laid out in your machine and determining which drive is hdda, hddb, etc, it sounds silly but it can't prevent you from losing information in the event of a drive failure/reinstall.

[rcrh]

I've had the problem a few times since building my Amahi server, and every time it ended up being a bad SATA cable...

Thanks billium, but the problem was SATA cables because the HPMSS doesn't have drive cables. It has a backbone right off of the motherboard that the drives plug into.

I've actually given up on the HP and completely replaced the server from scratch. All eleven drives are up and operational in the new hardware.

YEAH!

[spnz]

I've had the problem a few times since building my Amahi server, and every time it ended up being a bad SATA cable...

Thanks billium, but the problem was SATA cables because the HPMSS doesn't have drive cables. It has a backbone right off of the motherboard that the drives plug into.

I've actually given up on the HP and completely replaced the server from scratch. All eleven drives are up and operational in the new hardware.

YEAH!

A year later and I'm having the same problems, slot 1 & 3 only working... when I stumbled across this thread I was hopeful

[tht]

I have exactly the same issues. Only slots 1 & 3 from the bottom up are working. The disks are recognized if attached vis USB.

[tht]

Fixed - for anyone who happens upon this post years from now...

This is related to the Integrated Peripherals/SIS OnChip PCI Device/SiS Serial ATA Mode Menu in the BIOS.
I had previously loaded the "optimized settings" in the BIOS. This doesn't help with Fedora recognizing drives in slots 2 & 4.

The only way I found to not get kernel errors was "4P(IDE)+4S(IDE)"
P stands for PATA and there are none. S stands for SATA.

Not sure if there is a RAID driver for the SiS 182 SATA that is included on the MB that works in Fedora and allows hot swappable drives. However, all 4 drives are recognized and I am content.

Good luck.