[mythtv-users] new drive, same problem

[Stephen Worthington]

On Sat, 22 Dec 2018 08:13:04 -0500, you wrote:

>On Sat, Dec 22, 2018 at 3:27 AM Stephen Worthington <
>stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 21 Dec 2018 23:23:03 -0500, you wrote:
>>
>> >On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 2:55 PM Daryl McDonald <darylangela at gmail.com>
>> >wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 1:38 PM Will Dormann <wdormann at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> On 12/20/18 7:33 PM, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>> >>> > What is your motherboard?  There are known bugs in the device drivers
>> >>> > for old Nvidia motherboards that make some drives do bad things - I
>> >>> > have an old Nvidia board where my Samsung 1 Tbyte drive will not work
>> >>> > - I have to run if from a PCIe SATA port.  I bisected the kernel and
>> >>> > reported the changes that caused this, but to date it has not been
>> >>> > fixed.
>> >>>
>> >>> Interesting.   I had a problem with my old nVidia ION system (nVidia
>> >>> MCP79) where I'd get bus errors with a SanDisk SSD.  I ended up
>> swapping
>> >>> it with another manufacturer's drive, and it seemed to be OK.  At this
>> >>> point, I blamed it on the drive being defective.
>> >>>
>> >>> The system in question has since been retired, so I probably shouldn't
>> >>> care.  But I'm curious if you have any more details about this bug.
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> -WD
>> >>
>> >> What I did last night is most likely a one-off. Earlier I had my power
>> >> supply powering my HDHR and cable box. When that proved unreliable, I
>> >> marrette'd the power wires back to a connector, which was also
>> unreliable,
>> >> so un-used and almost forgotten. Last night I took the connector off and
>> >> dead-ended the four wires, hearing only one more pop afterwards, and
>> that
>> >> pop may have been re-connection of storage2. I will claim victory after
>> I
>> >> hear no pops tonight.
>> >>
>> >
>> >The bad news is: I was wrong, the storage2 dropped out, so I powered down
>> >and switched power and sata cables with storage3 (previous test was with
>> >storage1) The good news is: since storage3 dropped out this time it is
>> >almost certain that the mobo is at fault. The bad news is the mobo I
>> >ordered is, apparently adrift in the Pacific somewhere. The good news is:
>> >its Christmas time and friends and family aplenty will replace my need for
>> >reliable Mythtv, for now, as I wait. Many thanks to everyone on this list,
>> >and I wish you all a splendid season of Joy and Good Cheer!  Daryl
>>
>> Ouch!  I hate motherboard faults - they are often hard to pin down. At
>> least you seem to be getting somewhere now with diagnosing this one.
>> If it is a mobo problem, then it will likely only affect one or a pair
>> of SATA ports, so the mobo may well be usable still if you add a PCIe
>> SATA card to replace the bad ports (presuming you have room to do
>> that).  It pays to put some tape over known bad ports, so you do not
>> accidentally use them again.

>I switched sata ports of the Blueray drive with the storage2 drive, so
>storage2 is now into the PCI sata expansion card(Silicon Image, Inc. SiI
>3114 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)), of interest,
>storage2 became /dev/sda1 and mobo sata1 port with Kingston OS drive became
>/dev/sdb1 (previously /dev/sda1). Also of interest, after switching cables
>the box booted once but I had to use boot-repair for a reboot. As I started
>this e-mail I heard the pop twice as storage2 dismounted and remounted, no
>power cables wire switched this time.
>
>Would this PCI card: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 [SATALink/SATARaid]
>Serial ATA Controller (rev 02) create an unwanted bottleneck if I were to
>plug all of my drives into it's four ports?

Yes, it would be a serious bottleneck.  That card only does SATA 1.5
Gbit/s anyway, which is too slow for a modern hard drive (6 Gbit/s).
The PCI bus is too slow to operate one modern hard drive, let alone
four.  You would need a 6 Gbit/s PCIe SATA card, with at least a PCIe
x4 interface to run a 2 SATA ports at full speed, for a motherboard
with a PCIe 1.1 bus.  If your motherboard supports PCIe 2.0 or 3.0,
and the PCIe card also supports the higher specification, there is
enough bandwidth in a PCIe x4 interface to support 4 or 8 ports,
respectively.

I am afraid that your PCI SATA card is only really useful for slow
devices like DVD drives.