[gentoo-user] Weird harddisk problem: AHCI disks sometimes not found

[Alexander Puchmayr <alexander.puchmayr@linznet.at>]

Hi there,

I have a weird harddisk detection problem which rises the questio: what does 
the gentoo-kernel make differently than the ubuntu kernel?

The system in question has 2 identical SSDs (Kingston SV300S3 60GB) and two 
identical HDDs (older Maxtor7V300F0 300GB) , all connected to SATA/AHCI ports; 
the HDDs are combined to a LVM-raid1 volume. SATA controller is a onboard SB7x 
on an Asus M3A78 mainboard in AHCI mode.

Only one of the two SSDs is attached at the same time to the system, the other 
one is disconnected. One contains a gentoo installation (just updated 
yesterday), the other one an Ubuntu LTS 20.04. This allows dual-.boot by 
switching connection cables.

When I connect the gentoo-SSD and boot it, BIOS finds all HDDs and the SSD, and 
starts booting; but gentoo does not recognize at least one of the HDDs (/dev/
sdc missing, dmesg shows link down on Sata-Interface
. Going back to the bios shows that even BIOS does not recognize the disk 
anymore. A full powercycle (pressing reset button is not sufficent) to make BIOS 
to recognize the disks again.

Doing the same with the Ubuntu-Disk works absolutely fine, all HDDs are 
recognized and the raid is working fine, not a single time that one of the 
disks was not recognized.

Without the Ubuntu observation I'd say its a hardware problem and the old HDDs 
are simply beyond their age, but why are they working in ubuntu and not in 
gentoo? And what is it doing with BIOS/Harddisk that even Bios does not find it 
anymore? I need a full powercycle to make bios find it again. This  indicates a 
gentoo kernel problem, and I have no idea where to start looking, and AFAIK 
there's nothing much to configure a SATA/AHCI drive.

Any ideas?

Thanks
	Alex

PS:
Sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-5.4.97, default configuration
Hardware: 
00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] RS780 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] RS780/RS880 PCI to PCI 
bridge (int gfx)
00:06.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge 
(PCIE port 2)
00:11.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/
SB9x0 SATA Controller [AHCI mode]
00:12.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/
SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:12.1 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0 USB OHCI1 
Controller
00:12.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/
SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller
00:13.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/
SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:13.1 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0 USB OHCI1 
Controller
00:13.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/
SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SBx00 SMBus Controller 
(rev 3a)
00:14.1 IDE interface: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/
SB9x0 IDE Controller
00:14.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SBx00 Azalia 
(Intel HDA)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 
LPC host controller
00:14.4 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SBx00 PCI to PCI 
Bridge
00:14.5 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/
SB9x0 USB OHCI2 Controller
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] 
Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] 
RS780 [Radeon HD 3200]
01:05.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RS780 HDMI Audio 
[Radeon 3000/3100 / HD 3200/3300]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 
PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 02)