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[SOLVED] RAID Si3124 Card


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Hi guys.

 

Ill like to share how I got a generic RAID card based on SiliconImage 3124 chip installed and working.

 

First, it is a RAID configuration. It works, but as like everybody else, it is not recognized as bootable by Chameleon RC5.

If configured as Pass Thru (just a bunch of disks JBOD) it will see each HDD and if these are bootable, will boot from them. But not if the configuration is RAID.

 

With that, my specs:

 

MOBO Intel DP55KG

GEForce 220

8 GB Ram

iCore7 920

6 HDDs

2 DVD RW

1 BluRay DVD RW

1 WiFi Nexxt Card 8185 RTL

SL 10.6.5

 

Installed the Raid Card in the next available PCI slot, put two 1TB WD HDD and booted.

BIOS message shows up stating Raid card is seen and enter config with F4. Got in, snooped around, got out.

Booted Ok.

 

Installed SilicionImage package, Sil 3124r5_2.0.5.0_Sil_Pkg (see Silicon Image website). Kext was installed and in Applications>Utilities you will find a SiliconImage folder with Log folder and SATARaid5Manager.jar (java app) that manages the Raid card. Rebooted just in case though it didnt request it.

 

Started SaTARaid5Manager again and it would NOT show the Raid card and give an error stating that there is NO RAID card as seen by this app. :unsure:

 

Reinstalled, rebooted many times. Installed different versions of SI Drivers, some actually panic and still no RAID card.

 

Found out a funny thing. If I took out the HDD from the RAID card, the SATARaid5Manager app WOULD see the RAID card. Hows that ah? Go figure. VERY consistent event. Put the HDD again, NO RAID card.

 

So the SOLUTION was. :angel: ... the other PCI Card. Right, the Wifi Card (which actually doesnt work since there is no driver for RTL8185) causes some conflict with the SI Driver. When removed, not just placed in another slot, SATARaid5Manager can see , configure and work with the HDD. If you change the PCI Cards position you get the same problem. This was in my case, you might want to shuffle PCI slots and see if it works.

 

Config as you want, RAID 0, 1, or 5 or JBOD.

 

Good luck.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I had a bit diff experience. Not trying to boot here just needed more SATA ports and don't care about RAID. I got a SYBA SY-PCI40026 R from newegg and installed the driver from Syba website. Random KP, data corruption, and nothing but problems. So I went to Silicon Image website and download the newest non-RAID driver. No KP and 2TB WD Green formats clean and checks clean but once I put more than a few GB worth of data on it diskutil reports that drive has errors and cannot be fixed.

 

So far I have had no luck. Tried in two machines. One running 10.6 32bit and the other 10.6 64bit. Two machines are the same MB and likely same slot so I will try another slot and maybe try the RAID driver but it's not looking good right now.

 

p.s. odd but OSX reports drives hooked to the Sil controller as external drives.

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I tried another PCI slot. No go. Diskutil sees errors before 5GB is even on the disk. Then downloaded the RAID5 driver from Sil and am running in passthrough mode. So far I have about 20GB copied onto the drive and it still checks clean in diskutil. That 10GB further than I have gotten with any other test. Going to try dumping few 100GB over the next few hours and will update with results.

 

[update] Got to about 40GB and then drive shows errors. Checked a few files that were copied over and all fail MD5. Not really sure what to try next. Think I might just be out of luck with this card.

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