Hi there,
I have been wasting a lot of time this week-end trying to figure out why the silicon controller is not working. Here is a quick rundown on my config:
A*N-SLI premium, AMD64 X2 3800+, 4GB Corsair Twinx2048/3200c2, XFX 7800GT, 5x250GB SATA Hitachi, 1x160GB SATA Maxtor, 1x120 SATA Seagate, 1 IDE 200GB WD
Bios #1009, Silicon reported Bios 5.1.39, Windows XP pro with all patches (IDE Nvidia soft installed ... no problem so far). As you can see with the amount of disk I have, I am using all the NVIDIA controller ports as simple disks. The system boot out of the IDE disk. I have attached 3 of 250GB Hitachi to the Silicon Image Controller which I wanted to configure in raid5. The driver version is 1.2.3.1, the raid5 software used 1.0.1.2. Will all software updated to the latest version, I can not get the raid5 to work. The raid software (which is pretty crummy by the way) is returning me a lot of errors. Their bios seems equally bad, lots of typos, not even reporting the logical disk properly.
Here is a lit of the various problems I have uncountered:
1. Boot the system, the 3 disks are visible on the silicon image report, "no valid device" error message appears (with typos). After the enumeration of the PCI devices, the boot locks up. Kind of interesting.
2. Second attempt, this time I am getting into the Silicon Bios uising F4 key. Create a raid 5 group out of the 3 disks wigth 64K chunk and a total size of 460GB (3-1)*(size of disk). Seems OK except that no Logical disk is displayed in the right pane.... another bug. Save the settings if one can say that using ctrl-e. The system reboot, this time the bios report a raid5 with the 3 disks attached, this allows to pass by the PCI enumeration and boot in windows XP. Now upon logging, the raid software is reporting a message event. It turns out the "message event" is nothing more than errors. The 3 disks are visible on the raid software reporting with all 3 x232GB disks available???? where is my raid5? Try to create a raid group using all the disk (MAX for size and 64k chunk) ...... wait then wait then and error message could not perform request ... something like error on metadata. With the previous version of raidsoftware, it was just locking up without even getting me an error message. A bit improvement for 1.2.3.1.
The disks are OK. I tried them on a different machine or Nvidia controller and there is no problem there.
Interesting enough , I have a small PCI SIIG controller with 2 ports that can do raid0/1. If I attach 2 of the disks on this controller, It is unable to discover the disks. In fact it locks up while trying to report disk1. This controller is using a SI 3112 chip. If the Silicon onboard controller is disabled, no problem. If enabled forget about it.
So far I have not found a solution and would appreciate to hear from people who have managed to run their SI controller in conjunction with the Nvidia.
Thanks
Eric
I have been wasting a lot of time this week-end trying to figure out why the silicon controller is not working. Here is a quick rundown on my config:
A*N-SLI premium, AMD64 X2 3800+, 4GB Corsair Twinx2048/3200c2, XFX 7800GT, 5x250GB SATA Hitachi, 1x160GB SATA Maxtor, 1x120 SATA Seagate, 1 IDE 200GB WD
Bios #1009, Silicon reported Bios 5.1.39, Windows XP pro with all patches (IDE Nvidia soft installed ... no problem so far). As you can see with the amount of disk I have, I am using all the NVIDIA controller ports as simple disks. The system boot out of the IDE disk. I have attached 3 of 250GB Hitachi to the Silicon Image Controller which I wanted to configure in raid5. The driver version is 1.2.3.1, the raid5 software used 1.0.1.2. Will all software updated to the latest version, I can not get the raid5 to work. The raid software (which is pretty crummy by the way) is returning me a lot of errors. Their bios seems equally bad, lots of typos, not even reporting the logical disk properly.
Here is a lit of the various problems I have uncountered:
1. Boot the system, the 3 disks are visible on the silicon image report, "no valid device" error message appears (with typos). After the enumeration of the PCI devices, the boot locks up. Kind of interesting.
2. Second attempt, this time I am getting into the Silicon Bios uising F4 key. Create a raid 5 group out of the 3 disks wigth 64K chunk and a total size of 460GB (3-1)*(size of disk). Seems OK except that no Logical disk is displayed in the right pane.... another bug. Save the settings if one can say that using ctrl-e. The system reboot, this time the bios report a raid5 with the 3 disks attached, this allows to pass by the PCI enumeration and boot in windows XP. Now upon logging, the raid software is reporting a message event. It turns out the "message event" is nothing more than errors. The 3 disks are visible on the raid software reporting with all 3 x232GB disks available???? where is my raid5? Try to create a raid group using all the disk (MAX for size and 64k chunk) ...... wait then wait then and error message could not perform request ... something like error on metadata. With the previous version of raidsoftware, it was just locking up without even getting me an error message. A bit improvement for 1.2.3.1.
The disks are OK. I tried them on a different machine or Nvidia controller and there is no problem there.
Interesting enough , I have a small PCI SIIG controller with 2 ports that can do raid0/1. If I attach 2 of the disks on this controller, It is unable to discover the disks. In fact it locks up while trying to report disk1. This controller is using a SI 3112 chip. If the Silicon onboard controller is disabled, no problem. If enabled forget about it.
So far I have not found a solution and would appreciate to hear from people who have managed to run their SI controller in conjunction with the Nvidia.
Thanks
Eric
