Jetson TK1 board and using SSD drive

I am trying to attach SSD drive (http://axiomtek.com/Default.aspx?MenuId=Products&FunctionId=ProductView&ItemId=1143&upcat=273) to Jetson board. But I can’t see SSD card mount to the system. The SSD card is full length and the miniPcie slot is for half length. But it is fine, half length is protruding out and I can manage to insert the drive to the slot properly and I can see the SSD drive’s LED is on. So the connection is OK.
In this link (https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/762445/jetson-tk1-and-2pcie-sata2-ssds-/), BILL said the SSD card needs to have USB signaling and those with SATA signaling won’t work. What does it mean?
Is that the problem? How can I make it work to mount the SSD to Jetson board?

My understanding on this could be wrong, but I believe the connector on that drive is mSATA rather than mPCIe. The connector would be physically the same, and either could connect to the other without harm, but I don’t believe mSATA would succeed on a mini-PCIe slot intended for PCI-express devices.

I have trouble connecting Samsung SSD 750 EVO to my Jetson TK1. It’s not detecting all the time. I changed the connectors and still finds the problem.

If you are putting this on the mini-PCIe slot it will always fail. mSATA and mPCIe only look the same.

I used SATA cable and SATA power cables to connect the SSD to JTK1. What can possibly went wrong that it’s not detecting at all?

The original thread was using the mini-PCIe slot…so in your case is it correct you are using the regular SATA connector?

If so, early versions of L4T had more issues with SSDs, so which version of L4T are you using? See:

head -n 1 /etc/nv_tegra_release
# R21 (release), REVISION: 5.0, GCID: 7273100, BOARD: ardbeg, EABI: hard, DATE: Wed Jun  8 04:19:09 UTC 2016

R21.5 is the most recent release, many fixes have gone in to this release and so it is fairly reliable (many of those fixes were for SSD).

Please verify, can I confirm we are talking about the SATA port and not mini-PCIe? If so, then you’ve probably found a genuine bug.

If this is the SATA connector, do you have a non-SSD ordinary SATA drive you can test just to verify the port functions with older ordinary hardware?

Yes I’m talking about the SATA port and not the “mini-PCIe”.

The SSD is detecting when connected using USB (verified on normal PC and on JTK1 to check its working), but not with SATA. Is this a bug?

I don’t have a non-SSD with me at the moment. I’ll let you know when I get to check with it.

Sorry for the late reply, for a bit there I got too sick to use the computer (I’m kind of only half here right now :).

This does sound like a bug. Validating that a regular hard drive works on the same SATA port would also validate this as a bug with that specific SSD (we’d know the hardware functions as expected and that the software can function). In the past several specific SSDs required some tweaks, it may be that this is one more in need of that. The cable itself could be in question, so try to use the same cable while testing both the SSD and the regular hard drive (I’d like to see the regular hard drive succeed with the same cable that the SSD fails with).

Thank you for the reply.

I updated the OS to 16.04.2 LTS last day. After restarting the board, the SSD was shown in the list of disks.
Then when I turned on the device this morning , the SSD is not showing sadly. The following is the log

Mar  7 09:40:56 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [  442.678272] ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
Mar  7 09:40:56 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [  442.678280] ata1: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps
Mar  7 09:40:56 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [  442.678287] ata1: hard resetting link
Mar  7 09:41:01 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [  448.187237] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
Mar  7 09:41:06 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [  452.728242] ata1: softreset failed (device not ready)
Mar  7 09:41:06 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [  452.733685] ata1: hard resetting link
Mar  7 09:41:06 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [  453.193252] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
Mar  7 09:41:36 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [  483.193253] ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)

I’ll check with a regular hard drive and let you know the observations.

I tried flashing the JTK1 again. The SSD was shown then. Restarted the device , the error message in the above log was shown. logged into JTK1 and the SSD was no more listed in devices.

This is a very useful bit of info from the logs you did manage to get:

failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)

At some point an error means the system knows something is there, but can’t use it; a bit more of an error and the system won’t even be able to say something is there.

There are lots of reasons why signal quality might fail for one drive but not another without there being actual hardware failure, but I think it is becoming more important to try a regular hard drive on the same cable, and possibly the SSD using different (and perhaps shorter) cables.

I’ve tried the regular hard drive (same cables). Still its not listed in Disks. Tried with different cables. Below given is the log

Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [    8.799969] ALSA device list:
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [    8.805709]   #0: HDA NVIDIA Tegra at 0x70038000 irq 113
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [    8.813841]   #1: tegra-rt5639
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [   14.092795] ata1: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [   24.100787] ata1: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [   59.108787] ata1: softreset failed (1st FIS failed)
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [   59.117540] ata1: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [   64.326794] ata1: softreset failed (device not ready)
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [   64.335818] ata1: reset failed, giving up
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [   64.344980] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p1): couldn't mount as ext3 due to feature incompatibilities
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [   64.357877] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p1): couldn't mount as ext2 due to feature incompatibilities
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [   64.378476] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [   64.390688] VFS: Mounted root (ext4 filesystem) on device 179:1.
Mar  8 05:39:05 tegra-ubuntu kernel: [   64.410561] devtmpfs: mounted

Both storage devices failed to identify?

I’ve tried connecting the regular hard disk via USB. It is shown as expected.

If you are looking at “feature incompatibilities” this can probably be ignored.

The other ATA errors are a problem. I hate to say it, but you probably need to RMA this Jetson. There is a signal failure on both regular and SSD drives and you’ve tried a second cable. I have a couple of JTK1s here and both have never failed with a standard drive (I don’t have an SSD to test, but used a couple of models of regular hard drives). There were some issues in the past specific to SSDs, those should be fixed with R21.5. I’m going to conclude that there is a hardware issue with the Jetson itself in this case. Having USB versions work just verifies the rest of what is needed to deal with hard drives also functions correctly.

It’s only a tiny glimmer of hope, but you might be able to spot a bent or broken pin on a connector…the trouble there is that even if you spot a bent pin RMA would still be needed since it is hard to repair such a thing without the pin breaking.

That’s some bad news! Thank you for your help linuxdev. I’ll probably go with USB connectivity as of now. I’ll have to look into RMA-ing Jetson. Can you suggest me a good link?

RMA instructions are near the top of this:
[url]https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/793798/embedded-systems/some-jetson-web-links/[/url]

Thank you, really helped!