Silicon Image 3114 RAID controller problems

[Daneel]

I've just installed a new Hitachi 250GB SATA drive on my Asus K8N-E Deluxe (NF3 250gb chipset).

I've already used the 2 SATA controllers that are on the mobo and am now using one of the 4 connected through the SI RAID controller.

Going into the BIOS I've tried a number of combinations of the options relating to this drive.

One of them is RAID, SATA or disabled for the Silicon Image controller. There is also a RAID option ROM which I have tried enabling. Doing that causes a number of other options to appear, most relating to which channel to use for RAID (primary master/slave, secondary master/slave, third, forth).

I also tried installing the SI3114 driver on the Asus site. Following that I had 3 BSODs shortly after booting up windows so I uninstalled it. I an see the new HD in the RAID BIOS but not in windows. Device manager shows an unknown, uninstalled piece of hardware but the SI RAID controller is listed under SCSI & RAID.

If any one can suggest how I might get the new HD to work I would greatly appreciate it.

[arthurleung]

There are 2 different versions of SIL3114 driver. One is SATA and One is RAID.
If you stick SATA driver into RAID mode, it BSOD
If you stick RAID driver into SATA mode, it BSOD
It took me a long time trying to figure it out.
I personally hate SIL3114 due to the fact that it corrupts my data when I give it a constant heavy random access load of like 12IOPS.

Make sure you get use SATA mode and SATA driver. I would recommend you to try get it from Tyan's website, should be listed under S2882.

[Daneel]

Thanks for the reply. I grabbed the file you are talking about, I think, there's an IDE or RAID option here:

http://www.tyan.com/support/html/drivers_support.html

I'm a bit confused though as it the 3114 already seems to be installed but I have another unknown piece of hardware in device manager. I couldn't get the driver from Tyan to install for either the unknown hardware or the 3114.

Despite the fact that it seems to be installed I can't see the drive in Partition Magic or windows administrator tools. Looking in the properties of the 3114 in device manager though shows that it can see the drive connected to it.

If I run the java utility to configure RAID, that's when I get the BSOD.

[Daneel]

Doh.

This should really be in the help forum. If a kind mod could move it I would appreciate it.

I got a response from Asus tech support and tried fiddling a little more but have yet to solve the problem

[Daneel]

Problem solved, finally. I updated the BIOS to 1009 and used the 1.0.0.7 driver. Set the 3114 to SATA mode in mobo BIOS and turned the RAID BIOS to disabled. All thanks to the info in this thread:

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=400297