Drives won't mount, Please Help!

[gregstrange]

Hi, I have an 8-port Tempo-X SATA (TSATA-X8-BCT REV A). It's been working fine for well over a year but suddenly it will only mount two of the five drives I have connected. My configuration is as follows:

Mac Dual 2.5 GHz PowerPC G5

Leopard 10.5.2

4.5 GB DDR SDRAM

The drives are housed in a MacGurus Burly 5 Bay PM enclosure.

I have three 400GB and two 500GB Seagate Barracuda SATA drives (7200RPM), none of which are configured in a RAID.

I'm using 1 meter eSATA cables. Connections are good. Cables are new.

All of the drives and cables are functioning correctly because when I swap cables and/or ports on the back of the Burly Box, I can get all of them to mount. But only two will mount at the same time.

Since I've come across this problem, I went to Sonnet's site, downloaded and installed the latest driver (Sonnet SATA 2.1.3).

It will still only mount two drives.

I've also booted up in Tiger and the problem still exists.

This has severely impacted my production. If anyone has any ideas please share. I'm running out of hair to pull out of my head.

Thanks.

PS: In addition to the drive configuration I mentioned above, I have five 400GB Seagate Barracuda drives which ARE configured in a RAID. The RAID will not mount at all.

[unclemac]

Howdy. I don't have any words of wisdom for you, but I expect Rick will be along shortly. I would suggest you email support directly, or call if you have a serious schedule crunch.

[gregstrange]

I sent Sonnet an email before I posted here, but I'm not sure of their promptness or overall support. These forums seem pretty lively so I was hoping someone had some ideas.

[ricks]

Time to do some checking and swapping around. Oh, and not to pick on you, but don't call that particular Burly a 'PM' enclosure. PM enclosures have one data cable and won't run off an 8 port Sonnet card which is not PM capable. Don't want to confuse people. 'Specially ME!

Common problems are cable ends not making connection at the Sonnet card.

You are going to have to list out the things that work and the things that don't work. Has to be a method to the madness somewhere. As in this port on the host card works all the time, this port doesn't. Or this bay in the Burly works all the time, this one doesn't. Eventually we narrow it down to what does work, and what doesn't work and we can figure what is wrong from there.

On the above mentioned cable connection issue. We saw some frequent issues from early Comax brand SATA cables where we would end up having to trim the connector to keep it from hitting the dividers between the PCI slots on the G5s. You mention getting new cables, they may not be trimmed or may not be made like our current ones that are cut back to clear. You might check to see if they hit at all as that will guarantee a flaky connection. We used to trim them like this:

http://homepage.mac.com/rstephens/.Pictures/SATATrim.jpg



The fit after trim is like the cable on the left:

http://homepage.mac.com/rstephens/.Pictures/SATAFit.jpg

[gregstrange]

i cut the cables back and it's working great. note to anyone else with similar issues: on close inspection it did not look like poor cable connection was the problem. it as if there was plenty of contact but i took rick's advice anyway and started cutting. thanks rick.

[ricks]

Hey Greg,

That is a cool answer! Just right. Thanks for the report back.

Rick