Thinkering with the sata hat

#1

Is there a way to use the sata hat without the usb bridge, maybe some usb cables (really shorter ones) and a good extender? I’m thinking of putting the pi and its own cooling on one side and the drives laying flat as they should be with their own cooling on another side and make a custom acrylic case or 3d print one with it’s own 80mm fans

#2

Yes, you can use regular A-A cable.

#3

Yes, but I have bought many with no luck, can you point to some cable that works?

#4

Making USB cables is probably cheapest and quickest. Cut any old one you have around - who doesn’t - close to the connector or even through the back end of it and use a short length of Ethernet cable, heat shrink etc
I am doing exactly what you are doing, btw, for the same reason of cooling.
By extender I assume a gpio extender, right?

#5

By the way @setq, do you know which gpio pins to extend?
Thanks

#6

@tgc

https://wiki.radxa.com/Dual_Quad_SATA_HAT

Those pins that have been described for use.

1 Like
#7

Yes, the extender is for the gpio

#8

Should a cable like https://www.amazon.com.au/UGREEN-Transfer-Enclosures-Printers-Cameras/dp/B00P0E3954 work?

#9

Honestly I don’t know, mine was trashed, the board was defective from start and became a paper holder!

#10

FWIW - my problems started when I added 2x more drives. My existing RAID-1 couldn’t re-sync without errors and all the disks disappearing. I was suspecting the USB bridge so was looking at USBA to USBA cables to replace it.

Last night I added the USB IDs for the new drives to the UAS blacklist, and voila, speed of the device returned to normal and my RAID1 partition sync’d within about 10 minutes.

Hoping this might help someone.

Cheers,

Paul