Differences between SIL3114 vs. SIL3124 -- can the latter run 4TB drives?

Nerva72

Weaksauce
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Feb 18, 2016
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I'm trying to figure out what the difference is between controller cards that use the SIL3114 (which I have two of) vs. the newer SIL3124 -- both are used in PCI controllers and are SATA2. I know the SIL3114 has problems with 4TB drives (and perhaps 3TB as well). I am wondering if the SIL3124 can run the 4TB drives?
 
3114 is pci/pci-x while 3124 is pcie. Given that 3124 is more recent i would say it could handle the 2+TB drives.
 
Avoid both like the plague, if you want a cheap adapter go with ASM1061 that actually works decently.
 
Avoid both like the plague, if you want a cheap adapter go with ASM1061 that actually works decently.
So because you know so much more than me, you're recommending a PCIe card instead of a PCI card, for the PCI slots in my home server? There's a reason I asked the question I did -- I'm not looking for a PCIe card.

I have a NORCO 4020 file server in my house that runs a low-power E35M1-M Pro motherboard, which has the limitation of having only a 16x PCIe slot, a 1x PCIe slot, and two PCI slots. The PCI slots are currently filled with two Promise SATA300 TX4 (SIL3114 chipset) controllers (each with 4 SATA2 ports) that I have had since 2004 and used in many computers over the years -- they just won't die. However, they will corrupt data if connected to 4TB drives (I'm not sure about 3TB and don't want to find out the hard way). I currently have 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, and 4TB drives in the server -- as the smaller drives die, I buy larger drives to increase the capacity of the server. So I would really like to find a PCI card that supports 4TB drives, so they can be put on the PCI controllers.
 
Well, I do know that the SiL3114 are plauged with data corruption even on smaller HDDs if you use more than one channel at a time (that's a very nice design bug) . The SiL3124s aren't much better, also... it's going to be really slow and PCI isn't going to help. I'm recommending PCIe because no sane person would run PCI controllers today. What are the PCIe slots occupied with?

You best bet would probably be the AOC-SAT2-MV8 but it's going to be really slow.
Super Micro Computer, Inc. - Products | Accessories | Add-on Cards | AOC-SAT2-MV8
3T -> 2T Possible? If so, how?
 
The PCIe slots are used for other SATA3 controllers. As I said, it's a NORCO 4020 case, which has 20 hot-swappable drive bays in addition to two internal bays and a slim optical drive.

The data corruption I suffered was not some random sloppiness by the SIL3114 controllers -- it was my fault. I hadn't reorganized the server in years, and when I finally did, I forgot I needed to only connect the 1TB and 2TB drives to the SIL3114 controllers -- the controllers reported the 4TB drives' size and could read from them, but apparently only wrote to the first ~2TB, so after enough move/copy operations I started noticing there were scenes of blu-ray movies spliced into other blu-ray movies, FLAC files containing video, etc. Once I realized my error I was able to salvage most of the data from backups or just re-ripping from my source discs, but it was a huge mess to sort out.

As I said earlier, those Promise SATA300 TX4 controllers have served me extremely well over the years, considering they were dirt cheap to buy in the first place. Sure, you can say they are "slow" relative to modern technology, but they are plenty fast enough to stream multiple blu-ray remuxes to multiple computers without breaking a sweat -- so why do I need faster controllers, exactly?? Those old 1TB drives connected to the Promise controllers are used for PVR and have recorded 8 HD shows simultaneously. The server's boot drive is a SSD connected to the SATA3 motherboard, so there's no speed problem there.

Again, the big question I have is if the SIL3124 supports 4TB drives -- if it does, then they're perfect for what my server needs.

Regarding the AOC-SAT2-MV8 -- 8 ports is impressive, and in the Newegg Q&A there's a guy that says he's running 8TB drives on his card. But I have two questions about that card:

1) It is a PCI-X card -- is it compatible with a PCI (3.0) motherboard? Speed isn't a big deal, but it has to function properly.

2) Will two of the cards get along together? I have seen comments on other 8-port cards indicating that they don't get along with other cards.
 
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