# SATA to USB adapter (Sunplus) not working

## ZeuZ_NG

Hey guys, what seems to be the module for it?

No matter what disk I plug, it'll get stuck in creating /dev/sdb (no partitions, just root device)

The USB ID is:

Bus 003 Device 013: ID 1bcf:0c31 Sunplus Innovation Technology Inc. SPIF30x Serial-ATA bridge

I can't find the chipset it uses, if it were JMicron or such I would just build it and modprobe it but alas, cant find the corresponding one..

Regards

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## Buffoon

You forgot to tell us what's in dmesg when you plug it in.

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## NeddySeagoon

ZeuZ_NG,

How is the HDD on the end of your SPIF30x Serial-ATA bridge powered.

Wall wart,

USB Bus powered

Bus powered with a Y-Cable? 

What sort of HDD is it, SSD or conventional magnetic.

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## ZeuZ_NG

dmesg says:

[ 2380.088105] usb 3-3: new high-speed USB device number 6 using xhci_hcd

[ 2380.255364] usb 3-3: New USB device found, idVendor=1bcf, idProduct=0c31

[ 2380.255369] usb 3-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3

[ 2380.255371] usb 3-3: Product: USB to Serial-ATA bridge

[ 2380.255373] usb 3-3: Manufacturer: Sunplus Innovation Technology 

[ 2380.255374] usb 3-3: SerialNumber: 301123456789

[ 2380.257357] usb-storage 3-3:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected

[ 2380.258654] scsi host6: usb-storage 3-3:1.0

[ 2380.264441] usbcore: registered new interface driver uas

[ 2381.259851] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     SPIF30x  USB2SATA Bridge  0132 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2

[ 2381.260396] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0

[ 2381.261026] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

And it's USB powered (two cables - guess I mean an Y cable?)

It does work in another PC running Windows..

I've tried to use fdisk and gdisk on /dev/sdbb but it returns error 123 and no devnode created for partitions..

It's plugged in USB 2.0 ports..

The plugged in HDD is a traditional one.. (Not SSD)

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## NeddySeagoon

ZeuZ_NG,

Gentoo sees the drive but not the partitions. So far so good.

Does fdisk show any partitions?

What sort of partition table are you expecting to see?

MSDOS, GPT ... some other.  Do you have kernel support?

It may be that the drive never becomes ready. You must connect both arms of the Y cable to different USB root hubs as a USB 2 root hub can supply at most 500mA. That's not enough for a HDD.  

A root hub usually appears as two stacked USB sockets, so you can only use one of the pair.

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## ZeuZ_NG

The disk has a MSDOS partition table, Windows XP is installed in it..

(I'm trying to recover deleted files as Zepto crypted a lot of them, but so far as I've read, even if VSS is disabled, recovering from erased should work)

Let me try plugging it in two different USB roots, I've also been plugging it in a USB3.0 port, shouldn't that be enough?

EDIT: Just checked kernel config, support is built-in for MSDOS so that should be cover.

EDIT 2: Just tried plugging in the y cable both in the left and the right side, meaning one cable to each side with a USB extender cable.. No avail..

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## NeddySeagoon

ZeuZ_NG,

Recovering erased files needs a lot of luck.

When a file is deleted, all that happens is that the pointers to its data are deleted. The data is left in place on the HDD and the space is marked as free.

Zepto will not do encryption in place, it will encrypt a file, mark the original as deleted and move onto the next file.

If any of the space originally occupied by the first file to be encrypted has been reused, that file is gone ... and so on.

Depending on how full the filesystem was and how much has been encrypted, you may get back little or nothing.

Not all files will be stored in one contiguious run of blocks.  Finding the file fragments wont be easy.  

What size is the HDD?

Google is full of pain with drives over 2TiB on some USB adapters, including yours.

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## ZeuZ_NG

The disk connected to the SATA to USB adapter is 500GiB, however I just plugged it in another carry I've got and its now working.. I guess I'm ditching the other one as it won't work here..

As of Zepto, I'll try to recover some files and be back as soon as I recover at least one or two to tell you if they were encrypted in place..

Since the incident, the system was shutdown inmediately after realizing the situation, and disk was handled to us, so I thought why not give it a whirl?

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## s4e8

Linux only scan removable media disk after first access, eg: some udev rules would access it. If the disk isn't ready when adapter initialized, kernel found no meda & no partition. You must access it again to trigger another partition scan. 

 *ZeuZ_NG wrote:*   

> dmesg says:
> 
> [ 2380.088105] usb 3-3: new high-speed USB device number 6 using xhci_hcd
> 
> [ 2380.255364] usb 3-3: New USB device found, idVendor=1bcf, idProduct=0c31
> ...

 

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## ZeuZ_NG

 *s4e8 wrote:*   

> Linux only scan removable media disk after first access, eg: some udev rules would access it. If the disk isn't ready when adapter initialized, kernel found no meda & no partition. You must access it again to trigger another partition scan. 
> 
>  *ZeuZ_NG wrote:*   dmesg says:
> 
> [ 2380.088105] usb 3-3: new high-speed USB device number 6 using xhci_hcd
> ...

 

Could you please elaborate on that?

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## NeddySeagoon

ZeuZ_NG,

It your drive is slow to become ready, the kernel will scan for partitions but there won't be any.

Normally, this isn't an issue and you get warnings in dmesg.

Think of a USB connected optical drive with no media installed.

s4e8, is suggesting that you attempt to read from /dev/sdb to force a SCSI rescan. 

That may or may not mork.

There is a script too 

```
emerge sys-apps/rescan-scsi-bus
```

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## ZeuZ_NG

Oh, I see.

I've tried that, I get an error telling "no medium" is connected, however I just dropped the adapter, as I took another one (identical) from the store and it worked out-of-the-box, so I might as well tag this as a malfunction..

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