Dell T20 "blue" sata port

[PhilipS]

tldr; Blue SATA0 port on my Dell T20 seems to have a bad connection and I am wondering if other T20s have this issue.

I ran into an interesting/concerning issue with a Dell T20 system I put together recently.

During testing of the drives, I received some checksum errors on a mirrored zpool on one of the disks. Ran a scrub, all was okay, and cleared the errors. About 3 weeks later, it happened again, and then I lost communication with that drive all together. I replaced the disk, started the system, and the new disk did not show up.

So I shutdown the system, moved the SATA cable to a different SATA port for that drive. Booted the system, and the drive was there. I moved the cable back to the original port (this is SATA0, blue port on the Dell motherboard), booted up and the drive was there, back on the original port.

Needing to track down the issue, I started wiggling the cable while spamming a smartctl -a and found that if I put pressure to one side of the cable near the motherboard, the drive would drop out. This doesn't happen when plugged into other SATA ports. The cable does plug in tight to the blue port. Also, putting pressure on the port itself doesn't cause the failure, only on the cable. I haven't tested this with a different SATA cable, I'm using the cables that came with the T20.

Maybe this is a one off defect - I don't see anyone with this issue when searching the web, but I am wondering if anyone else can reproduce this on their systems.

 

[Spearfoot]

You tested the cable in other SATA ports and it worked?

 

[PhilipS]

Yes, plugged the same cable/same drive in another port, did the same wiggle, pressure to the side test and the drive stayed online. It only happens in the blue port and is reproducible in that port only. I have not tried a different SATA cable in that port however - which I probably should do at some point.

 

[Mirfster]

Agree with Spearfoot. I would lean toward that cable more than the port; but it is possible. Try a new cable first; preferably one that has the locking tabs and see how things go. Even may want to check the port and see if it could use a little cleaning on the contacts or if there is any debris in there.

 

[Spearfoot]

Well, that's good... and bad, because it sorta points at the port being bad when you'd rather it would be a bad cable.

Nevertheless it wouldn't hurt to try a different cable in the blue port. Because it may have been the cable that's bad, and it just didn't happen to fail when you moved it to another port.

EDIT: And I see @Mirfster has made a good suggestion, too. It wouldn't hurt at all to take a cotton swab dabbed in alcohol and clean the port contacts.

 

[PhilipS]

I'll check the port for debris and try a different cable and see how it goes - thanks for the suggestions.