Installing HDD

PaoloCC

The fact is that the supplied cable is not reliable. A cable with a proper connector would have been better.
I also wrote an email to them but even if they will send to me another cable I am real worried because so many people found this cable opened.
So in the meantime I ordered a 12 Pin SATA HDD Connector Cable from Ali Express. It seems delicate too, but I hope it would be useful if Beelink cable confirms its instability.
A consistent improvement of U57 will be a reliable Sata cable with suited connectors, not a cable which breaks just after mounting.

beelink

Emme-ics replied at 2020-12-26 16:53
Hi,
I have the same problem (with a Seagate BARRACUDA 1TB HDD ST1000LM048 too).
The first cable stop ...

You can explain to our after-sales staff that your hard drive cable is broken, and we will send you a new hard drive cable

ScoBo

PaoloCC replied at 2020-12-27 18:07
The fact is that the supplied cable is not reliable. A cable with a proper connector would have been ...

Were you able to get this to work with the new ribbon cable?

I have tried several drives and cannot get any SSD to work.  I can get HDD to work but only if under 1TB.  Anything over 1TB does not work or is not recognized.  Beelink told me in email that they only support up to 1TB.  All advertising says 2TB so that is false.  I want to try the new ribbon cable but would like your input.  I am pulling my hair out over this.

ScoBo

UPDATE :: I have been able to get a 2TB Western Digital Blue HDD to work normally.  Other drives below did NOT work.  I am using the included FPC (flex/ribbon) cable included with the U57.  I ordered different FPC cables to try from another provider but those did not work.

Beelink support did indeed tell me that the U57 only supports up to 1TB SSD and 2TB HDD.  However, I was not able to get my 1TB SSD to work and only the WD HDD above worked.  Other drives may not be compatible.

I was ready to give up and return everything since it wasn't doing what I acquired it to do.  However, once I got the WD HDD and it was recognized, I breathed a sigh of relief.  Everything is working great now.

Drives that did not work:
Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD
SanDisk Ultra II 1TB SSD

PaoloCC

News:
I received your SATA cable (It was inspected at the customs) in substitution of the broken one to connect my external HD.
It was not recognized by the system, so looking at internet I solved this problem going to Device manager - > Controller USB → Controller host Intel ®.... After right clicking on it I disabled the USB device.
The U57 froze, so that I stopped it pushing on the red start bottom on the front panel for some seconds.
After restarting, my internal Barracuda 1 TB hard disk was recognized!

Then I created a system Image and prepared an USB key to restore the PC.

I also changed the SSD Disk with a WD 3D NAND SATA SSD M.2 2280.
After the mounting of this disk I stared U57 from the prepared USB (pressing F7 during the starting). Here the result:

My PC

But after some restarting, again the system can not recognize the HDD, so you need to disable the Controller USB and to restart the U57.

Now I cannot do a backup. It ends with an error status_wait_1: 0x80070001, but this could be a problem of my machine, I will control.

In conclusion the problem could be caused by the USB controller. Its driver seems to be up to date.

I will do other tests and will keep you informed.

PaoloCC

News.
After solving the problem of the backup, that referred to my installation of Windows 10, the situation is that the Barracuda 1TB HDD shows up in system resources only sometimes.
The HDD is always recognized in Device Manager but when it is not present in system resources, in Disk Manager it is indicated as unknown disk that you should initialize (But this function does not work).
Instead, when Barracuda is visible it works very well.
May it be a power supply problem? As the disk needs more current at the start up.
Any ideas?

Good evening to everybody!

PaoloCC

My problem seems to be solved!

During the boot appeared a window: :) The device stopped working... After the recover and the restarting everything seemed fixed but then :) The device stopped working... again!
It was the HDD which made even some clicks.
Then, following Beelink instruction I mounted a new disk:
Western Digital WD20SPZX HDD da 2 TB, SATA III .

The procedure after booting is:
Launch Disk Manager. If the disk is not formatted it asks to initialize and to format. Then the new disk will be present in the PC resouces.

In conclusion, I do not think that Barracuda disks are not good. Simply my disk was faulty, as the HDDs have a huge initial failure rate as it is seen from the clients reviews.

I am very happy with Beelink U57. A great PC!