SBCs with SATA

[Foxxz]

Hello. I'm interested in finding single board computers that have one or more SATA ports with gigabit ethernet similar to the Odroid HC2 (https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc2-home-cloud-two/) or Odroid HC4 (https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-hc4/). I really liked the HC2 and had several and was sad to see they've been discontinued. So I'm looking at alternatives and would like to ensure I'm not overlooking anything thats out there.

I appreciate your assistance with my search!

[bitwelder]

I can suggest the Olimex OLinuXino product line (https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/open-source-hardware)
I had the LIME2 baord, with a SSD plugged to it.

[Nominal Animal]

Basically any Linux SBC with an USB 3.0 interface can be used with SATA, using an USB-SATA bridge; for example, based on the JM20329 like in the Olimex USB-SATA module.  However, very few SBCs can actually load their bootloader from the SATA media!

Booting off a microSD card is a bit iffy/risky.  You can get away with it with a good quality card (but good luck discovering which one is good nowadays!), and make it pretty robust by mounting the card read-only, but it is not as reliable as when having the bootloader (U-Boot or similar) in dedicated boot flash (NAND, SPI, eMMC), and the operating system, including the Linux boot stuff, on an SATA drive.  (The reason is that the boot flash is then basically never written to, only read.  All firmware and software updates occur on the SATA drive.  Only if the U-Boot bootloader needs updates, and that is extremely rare, does one update the boot flash.  And then, it is done very, very carefully.)

I have an Odroid HC1 (which is very much an Odroid XU4 with a built-in USB-SATA bridge), but I was stupid and never got the eMMC for it, so I do have to boot it off an SD card.  I am reluctant to rely on that for use when I cannot physically access the device, because of the risk of the boot SD card failing.

On the Odroid HC4, the JMB582 SATA chip is connected to the PCIe interface of the Amlogic S905X3 chip, but the board also has dedicated boot flash (16 MiB/128 Mbits SPI-connected Flash, for large/capable enough U-Boot to then boot a Linux installation off e.g. SATA).  Otherwise the HC4 is just an Odroid C4 variant.

It is this presence of boot Flash, say 8 MiB (64 Mbits) or more, and U-Boot support for the hardware, that makes a Linux SBC truly useful when combined with SATA SSD drives.

[SiliconWizard]

Now few (very few even) SBCs come with SATA ports, but quite a few of them come with a PCIe port - allowing you to use either SSDs in like M2 format, or PCIe interface boards with SATA ports (those exist). Of course, with such SBCs, do not expect anything much below the $150 tag or so (especially if you include the PCIe SATA adapter.)

[DiTBho]

I am reluctant to rely on that for use when I cannot physically access the device, because of the risk of the boot SD card failing.

Yup, no doubt about, but the sdcard can be used only to load the kernel, then you can mount the rootfs from a usb or sata device. This way the sdcard operates in read-only mode  and gets less stressed, so it should last longer.

[DiTBho]

p.s.
The project m.o.o.k.a. has already started: this time, it's based on a MediaTek's SoC 

Devices like the Delock 91660 (sATA to CF) have tons of quirks. Got somehow wild-hacked and now it's back working, but ... it's not worth the money (~50-70 euro on Amazon uk).

The MTK MT7622 SoC is nice for phones, our two R64-SBC are based on it, but it's full of bugs even with u-boot for Linux, and it cost a fortune due to a lot of mini-ePCI modules and mini-ePCI<->PCI-bridges you may want to add, because, believe me or not, PCI 32-bit 5-V cards better work with that stuff and are easier to get debugged.

We put 600 euro in this project as collective purchase. ~70 euro/person. Not too bad, and less than a dirty Allwinner H3/H5 SBC, which took me busy for the whole summer to fix all the weird hw, fw and sw and problems it has.

The R64 looks better, at least it hasn't yet manifested any hw bug, but MediaTek is no better than Allwinner and the fw and sw support is not exactly good, so ... no doubt it's a crazy idea, but at least it will take my *crew* of friends and I busy for the next year