Bytecc BT-PESAPA eSATA fix

Executive Summary:
Problem: Your Drives don't work under linux on the eSATA ports.
Solution: You probably need to set all the jumpers on the card one step to the left, as they ship only configured to make the internal ports work. However, there may be other things you need to do to make stuff function as well. Read below for longer discussion.

First, for eSATA you will need to fix the jumpers on the card by moving them all (yes all of them) over one space to the left so that they bridge the 3 & 2 pins. This is actually printed on the card circuit board near the PATA port, but it says pins 3&4 for some reason (but there is no pin 4).

OK, done. Power up your machine, everything should start working. The drive will be there, (though not mounted or formatted obviously if it's a new drive). If things aren't working or you need more help, the below commands can help troubleshoot.

Commands to figure out what is going on:

check to see if your drive is/is not detected:
sudo fdisk -l
look for a disk the right size that has partitions that match what you are expecting to see. A totally new disk may not have any partition table. If you see the disk in any form, then stop here, you don't have to do the below, you're ready to go. For fun if you have smartmontools installed, you can check the drive SMART status with smartctl -a -d ata /dev/sdx (where x is the drive fdisk saw)

However...
If fdisk can't see the disk...

You may have a kernel that is rather old no (ahci driver) or one doesn't load it for you. (check this so you don't feel silly):
sudo modprobe -l | grep ahci

if this isn't present, go read up on enabling kernel modules for your distro.

You can also check to see if the sata ports seem are up or down to linux:
cat /var/log/messages | grep SATA

this is what a port looks like down:
ata8: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)

this is what a port looks like up:
ata8: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)

Note that a sata port on the bytecc will appear as down if the jumpers are not properly set. You will also see a ton of other ports if you have other SATA ports on your machine, so look for listing that appear with the card seated, but don't with it gone.

Lastly, could it be that the PCI Express connector is bad on the card or your board?

look at
lspci -vv
and look for the JMicron SATA controller. If you don't see it, you may have a hardware issue or may not have the kernel driver loaded.

Sorry this was rambling, but hopefully it helped.