2.5 SATA mechanical drive

[guile82]

Hello everyone,

I have a problem. I Bought a GK3 of 8gb ram and 128gb ssd.

I cannot install any 2.5 SATA mechanical drives in the system. I can't even see them in the bios.

I've tried to install a 1000gb samsung drive (I hear tac tac tac) and a 640gb seagate drive (fast beeping). Both drives have been tried on a desktop and a laptop and work correctly.

I installed a 120GB SATA ssd disk. This is recognized and works but I wanted to use a higher capacity drive.

I used a 1000gb usb external drive and it also works through the USB 3.0 port

[Gabe]

There was another post some months back where a person was experiencing a similar thing. It's as if, at least in these examples, that there isn't enough power to properly operate the mechanical drives.

[guile82]

thanks for the reply. The system was sold to me as being expandable to have up to 2Tb of SATA HDD or SSD.

The usb external disk is mechanical and works perfectly.

Is the power issue related to the 12-pin SATA cable?

If the usb works, it should also work over the 12-pin cable.

Well, I'm going to ask for a refund from amazon.

[Gabe]

It may be related to the cable, or even the connector on the main board. I don't really know. You could try reseating the cable on the main board if you wanted to see if it can be remedied, but that's entirely up to you, of course.

No one would blame you for wanting to return it, that's for sure.

[guile82]

thanks, at least I know what's going on.

Having large storage capacity was the biggest reason I bought it. It's a shame because I was actually enjoying the system.

ACEPC should either remove this "This mini desktop pc is equipped with 8GB DDR4 and 128GB ROM, which has enough memory storage to run and save more files,movie. Also you can add a SD card(up to 128GB), expand with external USB or 2.5 inch SATA HDD/SSD or M.2 NVME SSD to expand the storage." or correct the text so as not to mislead the consumer.

[Gabe]

Just for reference, yours and that other person's are the only two examples I've seen of this mentioned on here. That doesn't mean there may not be others, but just that they're the only two I've personally seen.

[simonelombardo]

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[guile82]

Hi, does the spin up issue arise when puggling only the power cable and not the data cable? I just want to confirm it's not due to aggressive SATA management settings that the earlier 120Gb hdd (guessing due to the size, it's an earlier SATA 1 drive, not AHCI compliant) is ignoring.

Hi,

I bought the machine last week.

The cable used is the one that comes with the mini-PC (22 pin SATA with power)

All hard drives have been tested on different machines and are operational.

120 SSD: Works and is detected in bios (22-pin SATA cable)
1TB or 640GB HDD (both SATA 2): Does not work with 22-pin SATA cable
1TB external HDD (not the same as I mentioned above): Works via USB

I have a SATA to USB adapter and soon I'm going to test plugging the internal disks into the adapter and see if they work.

If they work, the power supply is not the problem but possibly the XHP-2 JST connector used to power the 22-pin SATA cable.

[simonelombardo]

.

[guile82]

Hi, yeah, the "keep the power cord, disconnect the data cable" test I cited was just for confirming whether the internal SATA controller is issuing ATA commands with a very low timeout treshold (SSD has not platters, so they reply immediately at commands that involves spinning activities, such as ATA STANDBY, SLEEP...) and the BIOS, thinking the media is freezed, issues a ATA DEVICE RESET... keeping the disk in a ever-ending starting process.
(I don't have my unit here, so I can't test with one of my disks).

If the disk stops to chime, then it's a BIOS settings issue.And that it would be interesting to confirm because all those SSD failures I read in the forum maybe these are not really media failures but just slower ata replies due to ftl wear leverage routines. SSD operating noises are very high pitched (e.g. I can hear the coil whine from a MX500) or unhearable.

If it keeps to do it this way without the data cable, the JST plug is connected to a current limiter (for some reasons) so not enough current flows for the spinning disk motor.

(The USB to SATA controller is just a different interface and, keeping the USB3 current limits, are on standard)

Hi, thanks for the tips but still no luck.

I tried to do what you told me.

I didn't want to open the mini PC because of the warranty but I put sticky tape on the HDD data connector but it continued to make noise.

After that I tried to connect the SATA to USB converter but it kept making noise.

I thought it had something to do with power and decided to connect my external hard drive (which works via usb on the GK3) and the SATA drive via the SATA to USB converter to my desktop to see the difference.

The drives are exactly the same (as you can see in the pictures), the only thing that changes is that the SATA to USB converter doesn't have a USB interface but a UASP for some reason.



very strange!