Sata port multiplier

[Don B. Cilly]

My motherboard (over five years old) is starting to behave erratically.
Sometimes it gets stuck at BIOS boot, sometimes it "loses" disks, card reader and a couple of USB ports are dead... I bought a new one.
Exactly like it :·). As it's fast enough for me, I have DDR3 ram and don't want to buy DDR4, all my OSs are set up for it...
... except, it's not exactly like the old one. Same make, same model, looks identical... it only has two SATA ports. :·(

Now I have three disks. And I was thinking of adding another one eventually, because who uses the CD-ROM thing anyway.
So I'm thinking, SATA multiplier.
I read about them - they're cheap enough - and, well, they say some things, the exact opposite, and all the variations on the Carlos Santana secret chord progression you can think of.

So I'd like to ask in what I consider a serious place - and I'm signed up on while I'm at it (·:
First, is the BIOS actually going to see all the disks as separate entities?
Second, how will Kubuntu deal with them anyway? Still call them hda, hdb, etc.?
I don't need RAID or anything fancy, just three (or four) disks with two ports.

I mean, anything I should know, anyone with experience of them...

[GreyGeek]

Interesting! I never heard of sata multiplexers before, so I went to Amazon to see what they offered. Here's one:
https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TR-004-E...CDR0H0T1HZ4MEF

When I replaced my 2.5" internal HDs with SSD's, I bought an HD Caddys for each one. They cost $6-$10 each from Amazon. I used them as external backups for my BTRFS subvolumns. Here is what I got:
https://www.amazon.com/ineo-Tool-Les...4GZN11GX4DEVK0

[Don B. Cilly]

Well, they're not multiplexers, they're simple multipliers.
They cost about $20 and look like this:



I was wondering whether Kubuntu could use one, and how.

[Don B. Cilly]

I mean, this looks rather promising, but before... burning the house down ;·) I'd like to... be a bit prepared.

[GreyGeek]

Well, I've reached the perfect trifecta: half-witted, half-deaf and now half-blind.

Again, I've never heard of a multiplier for Linux, but in checking there are tons of them around. Aside from having a single point of failure for all the drives plugged in, what else could go wrong? Whose writes the driver for the one you are looking at, and how good are they at supporting it? Inquiring minds want to know!

[Snowhog]

From the link: "(We may need to perform a long term reliability test)." You THINK!?

[GreyGeek]

I mean, this looks rather promising, but before... burning the house down ;·) I'd like to... be a bit prepared.

Their links to the JMB575 chipset return 404 errors. I found the real location here: https://www.jmicron.com/products/list/16#p_14

That looks like it would be a BLAST of a DIY project!

[jglen490]

There is this, for the hardware standards. And this for another link to a POSSIBLE solution. I'm not sure all your questions are answered, but there looks like a science experiment may be coming

[Don B. Cilly]

Well, all I can find here (on Amazon) are based on the JMB321 chip. Which is apparently slower (SATA2 speeds) than the JMB575 (SATA3).
Which, from what I read, is all theoretical anyway.
I'm slightly more worried about all the talk of Command-based or FIS-based Host Support, AHCI compatibility/discovery and... the fact that they're all advertised as Windows-compatible :·/ But then, that is to be expected.
And I was wondering how Linux kernels/older BIOSes would deal with them.

Anyway, I got this one. Being from Amazon, I can always return it, no questions asked. We'll see.

[Don B. Cilly]

Ordered on a Sunday, delivered Monday morning. And on an island, not bad.
I'll probably do the whole thing tomorrow, if nothing comes up.

I find it rather "cilly" though that the power supply for the board has a USB connector.
I mean, it's supposed to go on the inside of the box, right?
I have no USB ports on the inside, but I have a few spare power supply connectors... :·/

[jglen490]

Some motherboards do have extra USB headers on the board. These are often used for adding case adapters with multiple USB ports.

The picture of the board, with the standoffs and screws and the power connector, looks like it expects to be mounted in an external case or box of some sort. Strange ...

[Don B. Cilly]

Oh well.
I tried it (with the new mobo). The BIOS does not seem to recognise it, and only sees the disk connected to the onboard SATA port.
It looks correctly powered as it has a blue LED on it.

I've asked on the Asrock forums.

[Don B. Cilly]

Tough luck.
No replies on the Asrock forum.
I digged deeper. Believe me, the information is not easy to find.

It turns out that the board has an "Atom Processor E3800 Series SATA AHCI Controller" which - and that is not an easy search either - does not support port multipliers.
So hey. Bungalow Bill. :·//

Now, this has nothing to do with Kubuntu - it could have done if I'd gone past the BIOS - but while I'm at it... excuse the rant :·(
It might come useful to someone.

So Asrock make a Q1900-ITX mobo. Cheap and feature-packed for the price.
The SATA controller does not support port multipliers, but they put 4 ports on it which - in the quite words of Bill Gates - "should be enough for everybody".
It is now out-of-stock and you can't even find it on eBay.
Then they make the new model, the Q1900B-ITX, which still does not support port multipliers, but they only put two ports on it.
And since it only has one (mini) PCI-E slot, for which is pretty much impossible to find SATA controllers, and that is filled by my video card anyway...