I recently built my HL15, and want to add some SATA SSD’s using the 3D printed mount, however when connecting drives with an OCULINK → 4 x SATA cable, or a SATA cable to either of the two SSATA ports nothing seems to be detected.
Does anyone have any ideas? I may just be missing a BIOS setting or something. Current build is:
- HL15 Chasis
- Intel Xeon Silver 4216 CPU
- 256GB RAM
- 500GB M.2 Boot Drive
- Supermicro X11SPH-nCTPF
Most of this was purchased separately from 45Drives due to the cost to import it being higher that sourcing locally.
What type of drives are you trying to connect? 3.5" HDD? 2.5" SATA SSD? Model?
Re Oculink, I could understand that wouldn’t work. SATA isn’t a passthrough of PCIe the way NVMe, Oculink and MCIO are. There needs to be some sort of SATA controller chip to talk SATA over the connection. For example, on boards with MCIO connections, only some of them are potentially labeled for use for SATA break out and those are connected to some sort of PCH. On the X11SPH per the block diagram in tha manual the Oculink ports are connected directly to the CPU; the CPU doesn’t speak SATA. Storage-wise the Oculink ports are I think intended for connecting NVMe or U.2 drives.
Re the two SSATA ports, I think that should work. There is some mention in the manual of SSATA related settings in the BIOS so you should check those. Did you buy the board new or used? I would think the default settings would work. Those ports are intended for SATA DOMs, but I don’t think anything physically restricts them from being used with normal SATA drives. Of course you still need to connect your own power.
What OS are you running?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear the X11SPH-nCTPF has built in support for SATA over Oculink. A lot of newer boards do have this. My HL8 custom build uses an Asrock Rack board that has this feature which is how I’m connecting to the backplane.
I haven’t looked at all, but it’s possible someone makes an “external” SATA controller that connects to Oculink. You’ll need something like that or go with a native PCIe solution like NVME M.2 or U.2 drives with the appropriate adapters.
As for the SSATA ports. You can connect regular SSD’s via a normal SATA cable. You’ll just need to power off the PSU as David mentioned. I use these ports currently with SATADOM’s without any issues.
The drives are 870 Evo SSD’s. I’m running TrueNas Scale.
That explains the OCULINK then! Should have done a bit more research but just kinda assumed it would work as the store links to those break out cables. Oh well.
In terms of the SSATA ports, the BIOS isn’t detecting anything when the drives are connected with a SATA cable (Was included with the MOBO), and power from my PSU. I’ll have another dig through the manual to see if any settings jump out at me.
The motherboard is new, purchased through Lambda-tek here in the UK.
I’ll probably look for a HBA or similar and go that route with it.
I must be missing a setting or something for the SSATA ports. How have you found the SATADOM’s? I kept away from them and just went the route of a M.2 for boot but it would be a good way of migrating to two boot drives for some added redundancy,
They’ve worked great as redundant boot drives using TrueNAS Scale. I’ve been running this way for over a year. I’d much rather have the m.2 slot for L2ARC or Special VDEV for my main pool than use it to achieve slightly faster boot times. No issues with UI responsiveness either.
When I have a moment here, I can get you some more details. I know I went with Supermicro branded DOM’s but not exactly sure on models off the top of my head.
1 Like
Found it! I bought two SSD-DM128-SMCMVN1 on Ebay last year. You don’t really need 128GB for TrueNAS boot drive but the higher capacity SATADOM’s have better Read and Write speeds. The product info page linked below details the differences between the models.
Super Micro Computer, Inc. - SATA DOM Solutions
I was looking into this a few weeks ago, I haven’t purchased anything yet, but where I ended up was combining this
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073W65QX6
with a regular NVMe and one of these
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NY4S5CS
My HL15 isn’t fully populated with 3.5" drives, so I was thinking of ‘stealing’ power from the backplane by plugging the power connector into one of the empty bays, then either using one of the 3.5->2.5 adapter trays to hold the whole setup unless/until I add more 3.5" drives, or mounting it in the 3d printed 2.5" SSD cage
No idea if this would work, but I’d love to try
If the goal is to get NVMe storage connected to the Oculink port you could look at something like this;
CY External Oculink SFF-8612 SFF-8611 to M.2 NGFF M-Key to NVME PCIe SSD 2280 SSD Enclosure Adapter for Mainboard
or this
Athena Power BP-M22NVMEO350, 3.5" Bay NVMe M.2 Backplane Cage for 2x M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs with 2x Oculink 4i Connectors
Not necessarily recommending those specifically, but they may give you some leads to search for similar adapters. Icy Dock may make something similar, although their stuff may be a bit big to go inside the HL15 easily.
OP was asking about connecting 2.5 inch SATA drives though. To do that, they would need to take your solution or the first one above and throw a m.2 SATA adapter like the one used in the HL8 into the m.2 slot to then connect the 2.5-inch sata drives to.
1 Like
Thanks for the info!
I made the jump, went for two 64GB SATADOMs to free up the M.2 SSD. Both were detected straight away so seems there must have been something else with the other drives.
Ordered a HBA and cables so will hopefully be able to get the other drives working soon!
2 Likes
