Topton Motherboard No SATA drives found

[mudi]

Hello everyone,

I recently bought a Topton Motherboard with the N5105 in it. I used to have an old NAS running TrueNAS Core with 3x HDDs (Data drives) and 1x SSD as a boot drive and I wanted to move it to a more power efficient setup.

My issue: I can't figure out why none of my Storage is being detected in the Topton Motherboard... the weird thing is that the board itself has 6x SATA connections but BIOS reports only 3 of them; all of which are shown as empty.
I searched the internet for common issues like these but with no luck; since people on this forum seem very knowledgable about these boards, I thought to give it a try and ask for any hints as to what is going on.

Things I have tried:

Restore BIOS defaults
Unplugged everything and plugged only the SSD in it.
Tried a different HDD all together.
Tried a brand new HDD.

Nothing seems to be helping; the SATA Configuration always shows the same 3 out of 6 Ports as empty.

Thank you for reading and for maybe giving any pointers to this issue...

 

[oneplane]

Sounds like defective hardware, best contact the seller or marketplace where you got it.

 

[mudi]

Thank you for the quick reply. I am also suspecting a hardware defect; I contacted the seller and hopefully I can get one that works...

 

[RolloZ170]

Nothing seems to be helping; the SATA Configuration always shows the same 3 out of 6 Ports as empty.

means 3 are working with your HDDs ?

 

[mudi]

means 3 are working with your HDDs ?

Unfortunately no. The BIOS only lists 3 empty SATA ports even though the board itself has 6 physical ports.

 

[RolloZ170]

Unfortunately no. The BIOS only lists 3 empty SATA ports even though the board itself has 6 physical ports.

"always shows the same 3 out of 6 Ports as empty"
confusing !
i think there is a wrong BIOS on it. call the seller.

 

[mudi]

"always shows the same 3 out of 6 Ports as empty"
confusing !
i think there is a wrong BIOS on it. call the seller.

Now that you say it, yes I should have paraphrased it better, my bad!
I contacted the seller, still waiting to get a response.
Is it possible for me to flash the BIOS? I have not seen a way to do that and there doesn't seem to be an official site with documentation and/or BIOS versions to flash the board with.

 

[RolloZ170]

Is it possible for me to flash the BIOS? I have not seen a way to do that and there doesn't seem to be an official site with documentation and/or BIOS versions to flash the board with.

the main problem is to get the right BIOS file.

 

[mudi]

the main problem is to get the right BIOS file.

Exactly...I assume nobody has a link to a support site...

 

[InsaneNutter]

the main problem is to get the right BIOS file.

Exactly...I assume nobody has a link to a support site...

From the research I did before purchasing I believe the Topton is simply a re-branded BKHD motherboard.

The BK NVR N5105 is the motherboard with 2x NVMe

The BK NAS N510X is the motherboard with 1x NVMe and 1x PCI-E

Both have BIOS downloads on the BK site I've linked to, the file date on the NAS board is 4th August 2023, where as the NVR board is 28th March 2023.

 

[mudi]

From the research I did before purchasing I believe the Topton is simply a re-branded BKHD motherboard.

The BK NVR N5105 is the motherboard with 2x NVMe

The BK NAS N510X is the motherboard with 1x NVMe and 1x PCI-E

Both have BIOS downloads on the BK site I've linked to, the file date on the NAS board is 4th August 2023, where as the NVR board is 28th March 2023.

You are a lifesaver, thank you! I am confident this is what I am looking for; I have the X version because of my pci-e slot. Also when I pressed default settings in the BIOS, the startup image changed from AMI to the green BK logo.

I will try to find a way to flash this BIOS onto my board...I hope I can do it via USB Stick...

 

[mudi]

Update:
I flashed my BIOS using the link above but that unfortunately did absolutely nothing...
Seems like the BIOS before and the one I flashed onto it are identical; I thought about flashing the other BIOS (the one for the 2x nvme slot board) onto my board but that is probably a bad idea...

 

[RolloZ170]

--do you have the cw-n5105-nas ??
if you flash to BIOS for regular "cw-n5105" - JMB585 controller is not visible (and 5 SATA ports are not usable)

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/topton-nas-motherboard.37979/post-376919

 

[mudi]

This is the exact board that I bought:

KingnovyPC NAS Motherboard N5105,4 Port i226/i225 2.5GbE LAN,M.2 NVMe, 6*SATA3.0,2*DDR4, 1*PCIe4.0, Mini ITX Soft Router VPN Openwrt Barebone Micro Appliance DIY https://amzn.eu/d/2775x14

I will check out the other BIOS versions...

 

[RolloZ170]

This is the exact board that I bought:

KingnovyPC NAS Motherboard N5105,4 Port i226/i225 2.5GbE LAN,M.2 NVMe, 6*SATA3.0,2*DDR4, 1*PCIe4.0, Mini ITX Soft Router VPN Openwrt Barebone Micro Appliance DIY https://amzn.eu/d/2775x14

I will check out the other BIOS versions...

afaik this needs the nas BIOS.

 

[mudi]

afaik this needs the nas BIOS.

I flashed this BIOS to it:

BKHD N5105 1338-NAS

The BKHD NAS 510X motherboard adopts a low-power Celeron quad-core four-thread processor, equipped with four 2.5G Ethernet ports and up to six SATA ports. It is suitable for setting up home network storage, big data network transmission, remote access, etc.

www.bkipc.com

It seems like the exact board and I only have two options here anyway. I am quite sure this has to be the correct BIOS for my board ._.

 

[RolloZ170]

It seems like the exact board and I only have two options here anyway. I am quite sure this has to be the correct BIOS for my board ._.

ok, even with wrong BIOS one SATA should be working.

 

[mudi]

Update:

I got the system running; I had to flash my boot SSD with a new TrueNAS OS and that kinda worked...at least my storage pool is detected normally and the System is running; I am happy to have gotten so far with this board...

Problems:

1) The BIOS still shows only 3 Sata Ports in total and all of them are always empty.
2) My boot SSD doesn't show up all the time and the system can't boot when this happens.
3) My hot spare HDD is not being recognized even in the TrueNAS OS; the hot spare is the same model as my regular pool drives and they are fine.

These are relatively "minor" problems that I can deal with as time goes on; I am honestly just happy the system is up and running.