Regular readers will know I’m into DIY and fixing things. Lately my Linux PC has been having some hardware problems (which is why people haven’t been seeing a lot of regular posts from me lately). It’s been going on for some time in fact. I’ve checked out a lot of potential hardware issues and ended up replacing most of the computer at one point or another. One thing I haven’t checked out is the SATA cables. Last Friday I borrowed a couple from the place where I volunteer. I removed one cable and replaced it with the one I borrowed. The speed increased as soon as I turned on the machine. However in order to remove the cable from the motherboard I had to remove the other three. Apparently I didn’t put the first two back in the same plugs where they were originally. The computer couldn’t find the boot drive. After a quick switch of the first two cables things worked again.
The lesson here is when replacing SATA cables, make sure they go back into the same place.
