RAID + single

[Guest Ron]

The Seagate doesn't have a jumper. It's not the drive, I'm positive of that. If it were, I would never be able to see/use it on the current setup. No - it's either the driver, the [system] BIOS or both. Extremely frustrating.

 

Meanwhile, I've popped in a PATA133 Maxtor on the PRI-MAS EIDE channel. No problem. Everything seems to be perfect! The machine has been re-booted countles times...and never a hiccup booting from the Raptor array. The Maxtor is fine, and the two optical drives (on the SEC EIDE channel) and the FDD...all A-okay.

 

So. Is there another source for an integrated 3114 driver besides S.I.? I know other nForce2 mobo's use the same controller, but the drivers they provide [online] all seem to be for NVRaid, which I do not want.

 

Is anyone else watching this thread? We could use some input here, gentlemen!

 

Many thanks

[medianOCer]

Here's a link where you can download a SATA 3114 RAID manual -

http://us.dfi.com.tw/Support/Download/manu...TYPE=MB&SITE=NA

 

Have you gone through that thoroughly yet?

Maybe that's old news. Apologies if it is.

 

Back with you later on.

[kitfit1]

Ron, i think i might know what is happening. You said you re-downloaded the drivers from SI. Even though they are for the SI3114 chip, on SI's site they are in fact for add in pci cards with that chip in them. Can you go here http://eu.dfi.com.tw/Support/Download/driv..._FLAG=A&SITE=UK and install that driver, because that one is written fo our mobo's. Hopefully that might cure the problem. It's an image file you burn to floppy.

[Guest Ron]

Thanks for the link to manual. Indeed I have read that. In fact I have been using RAID in 0, 1, and 0 + 1 on & off for years...so I'm clear on the concept. But I don't want -- and shouldn't need -- to install RAID software to achieve my goal. The hardware can do it alone.

 

Kit - that driver link appears to reside in the UK. Regardless, it refused to load for me, so I went to the DFI.COM.TW site and downloaded the one they have there. It turned out to be ver 1.0.0.1, which was accepted. But after reboot the Seagate was still invisible. I swapped it over to port # 3, and after a re-scan it popped right up. So I rebooted and it was gone again. Then I went thru the "Update driver" for the 3114 controller...and it found a ver 1.0.0.7 somewhere (presumably online) and loaded that. But after re-booting, the drive was still invisible.

 

Back to you, gents!

(Please don't give up on me yet!)

[medianOCer]

Even if you're not using the drive in the RAID config with your other drives, does

it have to be connected and configured when you W-install for it to work properly?

 

Have you tired different Sil BIOSes? Or messed with the Sil BIOS config and tried

to get rid of the 'invalid RAID drive' prompt in there. Even though the drive might

not be used in any type of RAID config, does it have to be setup as a RAID drive

and have some form of striping tacked to it?

 

Maybe I'm just putting my feet in my mouth..? Back later to see if I can do that

some more. :shake:

[Guest Ron]

Hmm. Well, the Si BIOS is integrated with/into the system BIOS, so no...I haven't tried different ones because I haven't/won't mess with the main BIOS.

 

The RAID0 is striped across two identical [in this case 36GB] drives. The Si BIOS reports the two drives as one 72GB drive to Windows...which assigns it the letter "C". The fact that there is a third drive attached to the controller is irrelevant to the RAID...and to Windows. (Except that -- when it's working as it should -- that third drive is seen by Windows, and assigned a letter.)

 

The controller should have no trouble differentiating between the PAIR of drives which are striped in an array...and the single/stand-alone drive. Under RAID0, RAID1 or RAID 0+1, there is no way to include a third drive. So even if it were possible to mess with the Si BIOS (which it isn't) I couldn't add the third drive into the array. Nor can I designate the third drive as a RAIDed drive. It must be a stand-alone...single...by itself...outside-the-array entity.

 

BUT...as Kit pointed out, and which I've admitted above...what I am trying to do IS possible; people do it all the time! But somehow I can't make it work.

[medianOCer]

I understand what you're saying. If I had more SATA drives then I could try what you're

doing, and possibly give you more feedback.

 

One thing that stands out in my mind, is that in the Sil BIOS it's calling it an 'invalid RAID

drive'. Did you get that designation when you had drives running together before

and seemingly were okay with the setup you had?

 

Unsure as to whether it's a Sil BIOS issue or config issue with it, or whether it's merely

Windows needing some other config tweak to keep it from dropping out on reboots.

 

Maybe a dumb question, but do you have the S.M.A.R.T. function enabled in the BIOS?

Are you using the Sil SATARaid utility in Windows and to see what you can access

and change in there?

 

Are you using the NV SW-IDE drivers? Unsure if they'd have much effect, if any.

 

How about a bad or loose SATA cable or power connector? Might've already been

mentioned or looked at.

 

I'm just trying to bounce some ideas off you, and see if there's anything you have

yet to look at and try out.

[NOFX]

I think that the problem doesn't have to do with the Disk Management, drivers or disk partitions.

 

As medianOCer says, the issue, 99% sure, has some relation with the "Invalid RAID Drive" message.

 

Some time ago I had a similar problem under the same scenario. I had a Raid0 set of drives which worked perfectly, then I plugged a third drive, but it didn't worked well. I put it in my other PC and it worked fine, so I realized that the problem wasn't the disk.

 

So I tried to get rid of that annoying message, and after some time I finally achieved it. You have to:

-Disconnect both RAID drives, and plug the 3rd drive.

-Enter the BIOS setup and run SATA Raid.

-Press F4 (or CTRL+S) during SiI3114 Bios splash screen.

-Get rid of that annoying message, deleting the supposed invalid Raid drive.

-press CTRL+E to exit and confirm.

-Reconnect the drives and enjoy.

 

If it doesn't work, I recommend you to install SiI 3114 SATARaid Management Utility -you'll also need to install Java Runtime Environment, included in the package- and try to do the same. You can check and solve more conflicts with this application. I'm sure the problem will be solved with this, although I prefer to try at first with the other method.

 

Maybe you'll be asking why...While using SiI3114, when you add a third drive next to 2 disks in a Raid set, the third one is recognized as a spare drive -which are only useful in Raid1-.

A spare drive works as standalone, and it only get involved in a Raid1 set when a disk fails.

Maybe that explains the fact that the disk suddenly disappears (coz the controller doesn't need a spare drive at that precise moment).

 

Hope it helps you

 

Regards from Argentina,

 

Leon

[kitfit1]

I'm cumming to the same conclusion as NOFX. In one of my posts on the last page i said the "inalid raid drive" did seem odd, as i had never seen it in any of my bios setups. The solution that NOFX has come up with sounds logical to me and must be worth a try, it should'nt take much time either.

[Guest Ron]

Eureka!! You guys are the bomb!

 

I have to tell you though, I am astonished. The problem drive has been used singly for many months. And as I said, I've both formatted, and deleted/created a primary partition [on it] several times in the last couple of days.

 

OTOH, I do vaguely recall that it was half of a striped array in my upstairs machine long, long ago...but I never dreamed the metadata would have survived all the sterilization procedures I've done lately! But obviously that was indeed the problem!

 

With this machine off, I pulled the 2 cables on the RAID-ed Raptors and booted up. I entered the Si BIOS, and the Seagate was right there...still showing as an "invalid raid drive" in the lower right pane. I tried a couple of different things before I selected "Delete RAID". (After all, at this point there was only ONE drive connected, so who knew??!!) But it worked. The nasty message vanished right away, and the drive then showed in a normal manner.

 

Power down, re-connect the Raptors, boot up. I opened DiskManagement, and the Seagate 80GB did not appear right away...but Windows popped up a conversion wizard, wanting to convert "Disk2" to a dynamic volume. I'm not exactly clear on the dynamic volume thing, but it was the only choice, so I said sure.

 

There was a little disk activity, and then I was prompted to initialize the "new" disk, which I did. I was then instructed to refresh the view, which did nothing, but I clicked on "Rescan disks" and there it was. I had to initialize it again to get it online, then partition & quick-format. Done. Then I re-booted.

 

YAY!! It appeared! Like it should have all along! So I have no reason to be concerned now. Well, except that I have sent each of you a cup of coffee. And you know those pesky letter carriers! So careless!

 

So if you get a small-ish parcel that is wrapped in Saran wrap, don't turn it upside-down!!

 

Many, many thanks from -10ºC southern Ontario Canada!! I must honestly admit that this solution would NEVER have occurred to me.

[medianOCer]

Thanks for the thanks, and coffee.

 

 

:nod:

 

Nice work guys.

[NOFX]

Great! It wasn't easy but, in the end, it worked.

 

Some considerations:

 

-Partitions in Dynamic Disks are virtually created. Nor partitions neither logical disks can be created in dynamic disks. That's a con if you plan to install another OS. Dynamic Disks are compatible with Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server o Windows Server 2003 (Windows 9x/Me/NT/XP Home/GNU Linux/etc are not supported - Windows XP Professional is not fully supported).

 

-Dynamic Disks are only useful if you want to create RAID sets by software (for example, if you don't own a RAID controller), or if your RAID controller doesn't support RAID 5 (not the case of SiI 3114).

 

-You cannot use that disk as an USB external data storage.

 

-In most cases, dynamic disks are not bootable.

 

-If you want to convert your dinamic volumes to partitions (basic disk), you'll lose all the information, unless you previosly backup your data.

 

As you can see, It has a lot of limitations (sure I'm forgetting other ones), so I encourage you to convert your dynamic disk to basic disk.

 

To do that, open Disk Management > Left-click on the disk and delete the volumes > Left-click again and convert your disk to basic.

 

Now you'll be able to create partitions. Don't forget to backup your data before converting your disk.

 

You can also read the help by left-clicking on Disk Management, in the console tree.

 

Hope it helps, and congrats!

 

Leon (from 35ºC Buenos Aires, Argentina )

 

BTW thanks for the coffee