Sil3114 Problems

L

LstBrunnenG

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jun 3, 2003
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Hi again. I first decribed my desire to go to RAID5 here, and I chose to use my motherboard's onboard Silicon Image 3114 controller to manage the array.

Well I got the drives on Monday, and two attempts to format the array ended in failure. At first I thought Vista went into hibernate and killed the format, but now I'm convinced that the format died, and then Vista went into hibernate because it had nothing left to do. After the first format failed in the middle of the night, I rebooted and let the format run while I went to work.

When I returned, Vista was still up due to other programs I had running, but the format had died on its own. The array was no longer visible in My Computer.

I rebooted, and configured the controller to present each drive as a single drive. I'm not formatting them individually to ensure that one of them wasn't damaged whilst shipping out from Newegg. One has already finished, one is about to finish, and the other two aren't far behind. As far as I can tell, the drives themselves check out.

So, if it's not the drives, what is causing this failure? Could it be drivers? I went to Silicon Image's site, but Vista didn't seem to want to install any other driver than the one it was already using. Should I go to Asus's site start trying XP drivers? Or is this some form of known problem you guys can help with?
 
have you considered to build the array in the controller's BIOS rather than in windows?
 
I built the array in the controller's BIOS. However, I can't format it there. This happens when I try to format the array in Windows.
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
I built the array in the controller's BIOS. However, I can't format it there. This happens when I try to format the array in Windows.
Click to expand...

ah, I need some reading comprehension classes. Sorry, I guess I cannot help you then. Have you tested the drives individually? Did the build complete before you formated? Quick or full format?
 
The build completed before I rebooted.

After the second failure to perform a full format of the array, I formatted each drive individually. Full format, not quick. I hope that counts as a test...
 
Remind me to never again trust drivers from Windows Update.

Coming up on 21 hours on the format, well over halfway, and it hasn't failed yet. I think it was the updated driver I was letting Vista install. Thing is, the driver date didn't change in Device Manager, so I figured the update wasn't doing anything.
 
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