M4 Sata Hat four HDD boot issue

[merlinr]

Hey,
I have the Nanopi M4 with the SATA hat running Armbian and having booting issues.
The Nanopi M4 refuses to boot with four 3.5" HDD's connected at once, if i remove any of the four anmd only use three HDD's it boots just fine. The M4 is being supplied with 12v with up to 8A available. I have no idea the issue, when 4 HDD's connected the red LED is on but no other activity occurs.
Any ideas?

Have tried:
A: Different power source 12v 5A / 12v 8A
B: Changed HDD configuration, Sata power and data
C: Different HDD

The HDD's being used are "WD 4tb WD40EFRX"

[zamnuts]

Have you connected to the UART pins (between the USB ports) to monitor the boot log? What's it say?

If your next question is "how do i do that?" well...
I use a FTDI FT232RL based DSD TECH SH-U09C2 and set the jumper to 3v3. I use `screen` from my linux-based daily-driver. Connect to the debug pins (match them correctly, swap rx/tx), plug in the usb, connect to the tty (command below), then boot up the M4 to watch the messages.

Code: Select all

sudo screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200,cs8,-parenb,-cstopb

[Trupik]

Probably voltage drop from current spike while HDD's spin-on causes problems with boot. Try to separate power source for HDD's and for NanoPi