Irregular booting with HDDs

#1

So I received my SATA hat and top board a few days ago. Unfortunately, it came with a broken SATA cable and was missing the 10-pin connector. In addition, I’ve had a heck of a time getting it to boot and recognize all the drives. Currently set up with 3 3.5" HDDS (2TB each). Powering the hat with a 12V 5A molex power supply (with a molex to floppy adapter). The pi is headless which makes troubleshooting a bit more complicated.

Here’s the timeline:
When no drives are connected to the hat, the pi will boot fine and connect to my network. When each drive was connected individually, they all worked. When drives A and B were both connected, no problems. When drives A and C were connected, no problems. When drives B and C were connected, there was no boot. If all three drives were connected, no boot.

Ended up deleting all the partitions on the drives and trying again. After a bit more troubleshooting, I was able to get all 3 drives connected and recognized by the pi.

After that was fixed, I disconnected everything so I could attach the fan and heat-sink (since I had removed it during troubleshooting) and to put it in my case. Put everything back together and now it won’t boot if there is a drive connected (any drive), but if no drives are connected it boots and connects to my network just fine.

Really starting to tear my hair out with this one. Some really strange issues…

#2

I’m sorry for the bad experience.

Can you tell me the current of the hard drive?

And now as long as connected hard disk can not boot?

#3

It’s a seagate baracuda 2TB 3.5" internal drive. Rated at 8W under load. So that would be ~0.66A at 12V.

Yes, currently, if any HDD is connected, the pi will not boot. If no HDD is connected, pi boots fine and I can SSH in no problem.

#4

Do you have a 2.5-inch hard drive, see if you can boot if you connect it to the hat.

#5

Unfortunately, not unless I disassembled my laptop fairly significantly. Not sure I’m willing to risk that drive. Any other suggestions?

Also, If I have power going to the ATX port on the hat, do I need to power the USB C of the pi or the hat as well?

#6

Don’t take the risk. Just connect to ATX.

We haven’t had any problems with boot, I need to take some time to figure it out.

#7

Thanks! Let me know if you need any other info for troubleshooting.

#8

Unfortunately, it came with a broken SATA cable and was missing the 10-pin connector.

What do you mean by missing 10p connector? The cable to connect the hat and the top board are missing?

#9

Yes, the 2x5 PHD connector.

#10

Any more advice to troubleshoot? Still unable to get it to reliably boot and connect to the network with HDDs connected to the hat.

#11

I’m so Sorry. We haven’t been to work yet because of 2019-nCoV.

1 Like
#12

No problem at all! Actually, I ended up buying an adapter so that I could connect a monitor to the Pi. Oddly enough it booted up just fine. Seems to be an issue only with headless boots and WIFI. Very strange. Thanks for your help!