Sata device in a USB docking station problems.

[Nataraj]

On 03/13/2012 12:48 AM, Nataraj wrote:
> On 03/12/2012 11:56 PM, George R Goffe wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm having a bit of a problem with some SATA drives in docking
>> stations connected to USB ports.
>>
>> The problem seems to be unrelated to heavy I/O and occurs randomly.
>> Once, without the drive even being mounted.
>
> Did this configuration ever work well for you in the past and did the
> problem change with any kind of kernel upgrade or reconfiguration of
> the drives or cabling?
>
> Unfortunately I've seen this problem way too many times, especially
> with multiport Jmicron controlers such as the one that you have.  I've
> occasonally been able to solve it by changing or reseating the
> cabling.  Also make sure the drives are firmly seated in the docking
> station.  On some systems no matter what I do, if I do simultaneous IO
> to more than one USB drive I get errors like this (I know you say it
> is not IO related).  In some cases it works better to use only a
> single drive per controller and plug a second drive into a port on a
> different usb controller if your system has more than 1.  If it
> doesn't work in one dock socket, try the other.  Some of the
> controllers in these multiport USB peripherals just don't work well
> with linux  drivers or with the usb controller on a particular computer.
>
> I wish I had a better answer for you, but I think this is a pretty
> common problem with this type of commodity hardware.  I have some
> systems where it seems to work just fine and others where no matter
> what I do it won't work.
>
> Nataraj
>

A couple more thoughts...

If you are using any kind of USB HUB, if possible remove it from the
system while debugging this, certainly don't plug disk drives into it. 
I've never found a USB HUB that wasn't flakey.

If you have any way to boot another OS, either dual boot from your hard
drive or any kind of live CD or disk diagnostic live CD, you might be
able to use this to determine if you have actual hardware problems or
just compatability problems between the linux drivers and your
hardware.  Of course you might not be able to mount your linux
filesystems, but a good block type of disk diag should be able to do a
read only test of your drives.

Nataraj

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