Can an individual SATA port die on the MB?

M76

M76

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I've been pulling out my hair during the last week trying to find what's wrong with my computer.​
It would simply randomly freeze and not respond for minutes, sometimes during games it would just hang and either would continue after 10-15 seconds, or I'd loose my patience and press Reset.​

After eliminating the RAM, GPU, System drive as the problem I even re-installed windows to a different SSD, and still the same shit happens.​

Then I found finally that I can readily reproduce the hangup by copying files to or deleting files from one specific SSD. Hooray I thought I found the culprit the SSD is dying.​
Threw the SSD into my backup PC and ran all kinds of tests and to my relief/anger every self diagnosis and software reported everything is hunky dory. Even a full surface refresh in HD sentinel passed with no issues.​
I could also copy large files to it with zero issues using that PC.​

So I decided the final thing that could've gone wrong is the SATA cable. So I bombed my computer apart to be able to get to the Cable and untangle it from everything else, routed a new cable.​

Turn on the PC, awaiting bliss: SAME FUCKING CRAP, trying to copy to the SSD will result in the computer becoming unresponsive, sluggish, and the speed would be like using floppies.​

I was out of ideas, about to throw in the towel, but then as a last hail mary it occured to me why not try a different SATA port on the MB?​
And so I did, and as I'm typing this I just copied an 50gig file to the SSD with no hickups, when before everything would die from even 5 gigs. Or trying to delete a 1 gig file.​

So my assessment is that yes an individual SATA port can die, unless I'm still missing something.
 
Yes, but they came out with the B3 rev that fixed it. Which one do you have? Sorta helps if you include the a in MB model and system specs for people to help you it properly without guessing.
 
toast0 said:
Sometimes it's a design flaw

https://www.storagereview.com/news/intel-chipset-design-flaw-causes-sata-ports-to-fail

Sometimes things just happen. How old is the motherboard?
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That's interesting, never heard of something like this. But mine is an AMD: ROG Strix X570-F Gaming

It seems like I just bought it yesterday, but it's actually over 3 years old now. My brain stopped counting the passage of time when the lockdowns happened.

But the degradation aspect is definitely there, problems started many months ago already, and it progressively got worse and worse, but I always suspected the RAM after upgrading to 4 sticks from 2.
 
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I've seen physical damage too due to the retention clip on some SATA cables generally being stronger than the port. You'd probably notice that though unless it got jammed down and back again -caught in installation, caught on door, caught on other drives being swapped, etc...
 
Aaaand it's happening again, on another port and different cable. The drive would disappear while the computer is on, or take very long time to respond. Connected it to an external SATA USB3 adapter -> works fine.
 
if its the same drive, make sure by using an sata to USB adapter - if it still fails, its the drive
 
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bluestang said:
What drive is it?

Although it sounds like a MB issue.
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Samsung 850 EVO 2TB
whateverer said:
if its the same drive, make sure by using an sata to USB adapter - if it still fails, its the drive
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Read just two posts above

Installed a third cable (brand new from sealed container), connected to another never used port on MB, let's see how long this one lasts.
 
Process of elimination. First try another drive. If not maybe It's the controller on the board. If all mb drivers are updated then the board might be faulty.
 
And it's gone again. SSD still works through USB.

But if the SATA controller on the MB is dying, why does it only affect the SSD, and not the HDDs?
 
Link Power Management in Windows 10 might be the issue for the SSD. It's under your Power Options in the Advanced setting area. See if it Off or the other options are selected.
 
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I don't think it is a power management issue, after it disappeared it won't even show up in bios not even after power cycling.
 
Did you replace the problematic SSD yet? Sounds like you're going to kill all your sata ports, one by one, unless you do.
 
I've been running the SSD on the USB3 adapter since without any issue. This is a mistery. And as I mentioned I plugged the SSD into another PC and ran all kinds of tests and nothing happened. It did not disappear or kill the SATA port.
 
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