No max sectors reported on Intel SATA controller

[nuneze54]

I've got a new mainboard (Biostar B760MXC PRO, the DDR5 variant, and a Intel Pentium Gold G7400) with 8 SATA ports so I can wipe a lot of drives simultaneously. But I ran into this problem: Drives connected to ports 1 through 4 only report a real max sectors size of 1. The same drives connected to ports 5 through 8 report their correct size.
In the nwipe_log I see that it and hdparm report 1, but libata reports the correct value.

With the new t-option I can see that the path is different:

Wrong size reported:
pci0000:00 -> 0000:00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Raptor Lage SATA AHCI Controller (rev 11)

Correct size reported:
pci0000:00 -> 0000:00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corportaion Raptor Lake PCI Express Root Port #4 (rev 11) -> 0000:02:00.0 SATA controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1064 Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)

Also, for some reason in the log it says ata1 through ata4 are "DUMMY", so the physical SATA port 1 is reported as ata5 and so on...

dmesg_2026-02-09-17-27-55_system_uuid_36374249-2d47-444d-5300-f4b52072121d.txt
nwipe_log_20260209-102608.txt

[PartialVolume]

Sounds like the motherboard might use a different chipset for the first bank of four. Can you post the lspci -k output? Thanks.

[nuneze54]

lspci -k

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 4610 (rev 05)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Other
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 3118
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-S GT1 [UHD Graphics 710] (rev 0c)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Video
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 111a
	Kernel driver in use: i915
	Kernel modules: i915
00:0a.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Platform Monitoring Technology (rev 01)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Other
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gb/s) XHCI Host Controller (rev 11)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Other
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 6410
	Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd
	Kernel modules: mei_me, xhci_pci
00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake-S PCH Shared SRAM (rev 11)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Other
00:15.0 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake Serial IO I2C Host Controller #0 (rev 11)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Other
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 3118
	Kernel driver in use: intel-lpss
	Kernel modules: intel_lpss_pci
00:15.1 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake Serial IO I2C Host Controller #1 (rev 11)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Other
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 3118
	Kernel driver in use: intel-lpss
	Kernel modules: intel_lpss_pci
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake CSME HECI #1 (rev 11)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Other
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 3118
	Kernel driver in use: mei_me
	Kernel modules: mei_me
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake SATA AHCI Controller (rev 11)
	DeviceName: Onboard - SATA
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 5225
	Kernel driver in use: ahci
	Kernel modules: ahci
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Raptor Point-S PCH - PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 11)
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 3118
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
	Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake PCI Express Root Port #4 (rev 11)
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 3118
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
	Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Device 7a06 (rev 11)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Other
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 3118
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake High Definition Audio Controller (rev 11)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Sound
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 825e
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake-S PCH SMBus Controller (rev 11)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Other
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 3118
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake SPI (flash) Controller (rev 11)
	DeviceName: Onboard - Other
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 3118
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8125 2.5GbE Controller (rev 05)
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 2314
	Kernel driver in use: r8169
	Kernel modules: r8169
02:00.0 SATA controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1064 Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
	Subsystem: ZyDAS Technology Corp. Device 2116
	Kernel driver in use: ahci
	Kernel modules: ahci

[PartialVolume]

It does look like you have two different SATA controllers for those eight SATA ports, which could explain why they behave differently. Are there any firmware updates available for that motherboard?

In regards to nwipe and hdparm reporting a real max sector size of 1, nwipe will know this is nonsense and use the results of libata for anything meaningful. I'm assuming that all the eight drives are the same type? Some enterprise drives don't support HPA/DCO and may return a sector size of 1. If it is the drive then that will be returning an illegal command message (nwipe logs in verbose mode) it might mean Hidden sector is indeterminate. HS=???. If it's the controller that's somehow not passing these commands through then it's possible other commands like ATA secure erase might not work.

Check the bios first, I believe ASM1064 is AHCI only and does not support RAID but the Intel Raptor SATA controller supports Intel Rapid Storage Technology (Intel RST), allowing for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 configurations across available ports. (AI info so needs verification)

Are the first four ports in RAID mode? What settings are there in the BIOS for SATA setup?

The Intel Raptor Lake SATA controller

00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Raptor Lake SATA AHCI Controller (rev 11)
	DeviceName: Onboard - SATA
	Subsystem: Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp Device 5225
	Kernel driver in use: ahci
	Kernel modules: ahci

and the Asmedia ASM1064, 4-port Serial ATA (SATA) III 6Gb/s host controller that bridges a PCIe Gen3 x1 interface to SATA devices for the second block of four SATA ports.

02:00.0 SATA controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1064 Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
	Subsystem: ZyDAS Technology Corp. Device 2116
	Kernel driver in use: ahci
	Kernel modules: ahci

[nuneze54]

The mainboard is already on the latest version B76GO508 from 2025-05-08. The only settings in the BIOS related to drives I could find are these:

I can't see any options to configure AHCI, RST, or RAID...

The drives are all "standard" Seagate drives, but I made sure to check only one drive on both port 1 and 5, and I got the same result.

EDIT: Here are the manual and the BIOS manual. I found this note in the manual:

SATA 5-SATA 8 not support RAID mode.

But unfortunately still no way to disable RAID for SATA 1 - 4 too. I've opened a ticket with Biostar.