Read / write / checksum errors not caused by storage device

[BoomShaka]

I'm kind of at my whit's end with this issue.
I keep getting various read / write / checksum errors on the drive hooked up to one of my SATA ports. I have replaced the HDD with one that works for sure, the SATA cable as well and the FFC cable + adapter that attaches this drive to the motherboard. It's an odd setup with a laptop that requires this adapter to attach additional storage.

Does anyone have some experience diagnosing SATA signal integrity issues? For all I know both the FFC + adapters could be bung. However I'm a bit hesitant calling that the culprit since its a very simple circuit with 3 passive components (resistors or caps) and the soldering looks solid. I'm not against probing and replacing components on the motherboard but I can't find any relevant information on where to start.

Is my SATA port just bad?

ASUS G74SX Laptop
Other than this issue it works fine and is running many apps flawlessly. The HDD attached to the main SATA port works fine but 1 drive is obviously not ideal.

 

[winnielinnie]

A ribbon cable, to an adapter, to a SATA drive, hooked up to your laptop... to run TrueNAS?

 

[BoomShaka]

A ribbon cable, to an adapter, to a SATA drive, hooked up to your laptop... to run TrueNAS?

Poverty finds a way

 

[Ericloewe]

SATA is very sensitive to cabling, even typical cables in unshielded environments sometimes struggle with the nominal 1m maximum length.

As for probing... Do you have a 10 GHz analog front-end scope with a 40 GSa/s ADC? If so, you might be able to find official documentation for probing SATA signals. I'm way out of my comfort zone in that regard, but at a high level you'd want to see good eye diagrams.

 

[BoomShaka]

I don't have anything fancy but I do have access to a decent oscilloscope. I see what you mean with the eye diagrams, I'll look a little more into how to accomplish that with the tools I have.

I do also suspect there's a noise issue with the way the manufacturer set this up. I was thinking of foil taping the FFC cable grounded to the chassis to see if that would help.

Anyways thanks for the direction.