Solved SATA port multiplier support

cjyar

cjyar

I have an external 4-drive USB/eSATA cabinet, with 2 drives installed. In USB mode, FreeBSD detects both drives; but the USB seems a bit flakey. In eSATA mode, it only detects one drive. Does that mean my SATA controller doesn't support port multipliers? If so, can somebody recommend a SATA controller?

FreeBSD 10.2, amd64
Code: 
atapci2: <Intel ICH10 SATA300 controller> port 0xbc00-0xbc07,0xb880-0xb883,0xb800-0xb807,0xb480-0xb483,0xb400-0xb40f,0xb080-0xb08f irq 19 at device 31.5 on pci0
 
From your log message I see that your SATA controller is running in legacy mode. So the first thing you should do is to switch it in BIOS to AHCI mode. After that, depending on your motherboard vendor decision, you may either get PMP support or not -- ICH10 chipset supports PMP, but it is quite often blocked by BIOS.

If you really want to look for external controller with PMP support -- choice is quite limited now: either quite old and slow SATA2 SiliconImage 31xx/35xx, or later AHCI-compatible Marvell (make sure to not buy Marvell card with RAID functionality).
 
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