SATA on BPI-M3 with Which Image?

Banana Pi SBCs design BPI-M3(A83T/R18)
1

I am trying to get a 2.5" SATA drive working on a BPI-M3, but it is not working at all. I don’t even hear spin, and I get an error during boot saying

[ 5.326166] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
[ 5.327288] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Asking for cache data failed
[ 5.327296] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 5.331289] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
[ 5.332411] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Asking for cache data failed
[ 5.332418] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 5.332425] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk

I was using Rasbian, should I use a different image? How to enable this? Many of my customers are saying that they are not successful with SATA, and I also have this problem. Please let me know what I need to do. Thanks!

2

The M3 isn’t SATA capable and the kernel used on all OS images is identical regarding USB. So better have a look for USB messages: dmesg | grep -i usb

Since the disk appears but won’t spin up it might get not enough power. Try to power the disk externally and if that works you know what’s going on: http://linux-sunxi.org/Banana_Pi_M3 (have a look for SATA and DC-IN)