I believe my Asus A7N8X2.0 (deluxe) motherboard is damaged, because
the system would not shut down for three weeks and now it will not
boot my system disk. The fans turn, but the after five seconds, the
system seems to restart. I never see the bios screens.

I would simply buy a new computer, expect that I have an onboard RAID
controller with two SATA HDDs connected. The RAID controller is on the
Asus motherboard: Silicon Image Serial ATA, SataLink, SiI3112ACT144,
Q21932.1A, 0307, 1.1.

I have learned that I won't be able to access these two striped RAID-0
drives in a new system unless the RAID controller chip is identical or
very similar to the one that created the RAID on my dead system.

Therefore, can anyone advise me of whether *any* new Asus mobo with
Silicon Image RAID controller will be able to access my existing
stripe RAID? Or should I try to buy my old mobo again and connect
everything to that?

Anyone have the same problem?

Exactly why I dumped on board raid and opted for a reasonably high end raid
card (costs about 5 times the price of your mobo, which I had also)
I would doubt that you saw any significant speed increase using raid 0, as
the onboard raid uses the cpu.
Asus confirmed to me that there had been raid problems on this board, but
they thought it had been cured with a bios update.

You could check the specs of Asus mobos to try and identify one using the
same controller, or you could attempt to source a raid card that uses the
controller then try.
Presumably you have no backups. Personally I would perhaps take the
opportunity to upgrade & source a raid card on Ebay that uses this
controler, then hope for the best.

"Thumper" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>I believe my Asus A7N8X2.0 (deluxe) motherboard is damaged, because
> the system would not shut down for three weeks and now it will not
> boot my system disk. The fans turn, but the after five seconds, the
> system seems to restart. I never see the bios screens.
>
> I would simply buy a new computer, expect that I have an onboard RAID
> controller with two SATA HDDs connected. The RAID controller is on the
> Asus motherboard: Silicon Image Serial ATA, SataLink, SiI3112ACT144,
> Q21932.1A, 0307, 1.1.
>
> I have learned that I won't be able to access these two striped RAID-0
> drives in a new system unless the RAID controller chip is identical or
> very similar to the one that created the RAID on my dead system.
>
> Therefore, can anyone advise me of whether *any* new Asus mobo with
> Silicon Image RAID controller will be able to access my existing
> stripe RAID? Or should I try to buy my old mobo again and connect
> everything to that?
>
> Anyone have the same problem?
>

On board RAID controllers are fairly stable pieces of hardware,silicon image
3112 RAID controller however is/was junk to begin with,so is thier software.
By far,intel makes better RAID controllers.As for youre problem,how did you
come to the fact that the RAID controller is at fault.Try checking power
supply,
clear CMOS,try starting w/o any hds connected,etc...Also,purchasing a 3rd
party
card is a waste,intel RAID cards only come in pcie configuration,any PCI card
would be below even silicons standards...

"Thumper" wrote:

> I believe my Asus A7N8X2.0 (deluxe) motherboard is damaged, because
> the system would not shut down for three weeks and now it will not
> boot my system disk. The fans turn, but the after five seconds, the
> system seems to restart. I never see the bios screens.
>
> I would simply buy a new computer, expect that I have an onboard RAID
> controller with two SATA HDDs connected. The RAID controller is on the
> Asus motherboard: Silicon Image Serial ATA, SataLink, SiI3112ACT144,
> Q21932.1A, 0307, 1.1.
>
> I have learned that I won't be able to access these two striped RAID-0
> drives in a new system unless the RAID controller chip is identical or
> very similar to the one that created the RAID on my dead system.
>
> Therefore, can anyone advise me of whether *any* new Asus mobo with
> Silicon Image RAID controller will be able to access my existing
> stripe RAID? Or should I try to buy my old mobo again and connect
> everything to that?
>
> Anyone have the same problem?
>
>

I don't think my RAID controller was at fault. It's just that my mobo
appears damaged.

Symptom: On boot, system never gets to bios black screen. Fans work,
so I think the power supply is okay. I unplugged everything, one at a
time, including the drives. Symptom remained.

Therefore, I need to replace mobo with something that also uses the
same RAID controller -- only because I need to get the data on the
RAID-O hard drives.

Previous to the current symptom, the computer would boot, but wouldn't
power down / turn off. Instead, system would reboot. I undated the
bios to 1007 last week. Didn't help.


On Aug 12, 9:58 pm, Andrew E. <eckric...@msn.com> wrote:
> On board RAID controllers are fairly stable pieces of hardware,silicon image
> 3112 RAID controller however is/was junk to begin with,so is thier software.
> By far,intel makes better RAID controllers.As for youre problem,how did you
> come to the fact that the RAID controller is at fault.Try checking power
> supply,
> clear CMOS,try starting w/o any hds connected,etc...Also,purchasing a 3rd
> party
> card is a waste,intel RAID cards only come in pcie configuration,any PCI card
> would be below even silicons standards...
>
> "Thumper" wrote:
> > I believe my Asus A7N8X2.0 (deluxe) motherboard is damaged, because
> > the system would not shut down for three weeks and now it will not
> > boot my system disk. The fans turn, but the after five seconds, the
> > system seems to restart. I never see the bios screens.
>
> > I would simply buy a new computer, expect that I have an onboard RAID
> > controller with two SATA HDDs connected. The RAID controller is on the
> > Asus motherboard: Silicon Image Serial ATA, SataLink, SiI3112ACT144,
> > Q21932.1A, 0307, 1.1.
>
> > I have learned that I won't be able to access these two striped RAID-0
> > drives in a new system unless the RAID controller chip is identical or
> > very similar to the one that created the RAID on my dead system.
>
> > Therefore, can anyone advise me of whether *any* new Asus mobo with
> > Silicon Image RAID controller will be able to access my existing
> > stripe RAID? Or should I try to buy my old mobo again and connect
> > everything to that?
>
> > Anyone have the same problem?

More missinformation from the uninformed

"Andrew E." <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:CA77EE9A-D170-4978-978B-(E-Mail Removed)...
> On board RAID controllers are fairly stable pieces of hardware,silicon
> image
> 3112 RAID controller however is/was junk to begin with,so is thier
> software.
> By far,intel makes better RAID controllers.As for youre problem,how did
> you
> come to the fact that the RAID controller is at fault.Try checking power
> supply,
> clear CMOS,try starting w/o any hds connected,etc...Also,purchasing a 3rd
> party
> card is a waste,intel RAID cards only come in pcie configuration,any PCI
> card
> would be below even silicons standards...
>
> "Thumper" wrote:
>
>> I believe my Asus A7N8X2.0 (deluxe) motherboard is damaged, because
>> the system would not shut down for three weeks and now it will not
>> boot my system disk. The fans turn, but the after five seconds, the
>> system seems to restart. I never see the bios screens.
>>
>> I would simply buy a new computer, expect that I have an onboard RAID
>> controller with two SATA HDDs connected. The RAID controller is on the
>> Asus motherboard: Silicon Image Serial ATA, SataLink, SiI3112ACT144,
>> Q21932.1A, 0307, 1.1.
>>
>> I have learned that I won't be able to access these two striped RAID-0
>> drives in a new system unless the RAID controller chip is identical or
>> very similar to the one that created the RAID on my dead system.
>>
>> Therefore, can anyone advise me of whether *any* new Asus mobo with
>> Silicon Image RAID controller will be able to access my existing
>> stripe RAID? Or should I try to buy my old mobo again and connect
>> everything to that?
>>
>> Anyone have the same problem?
>>
>>

"Thumper" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>I don't think my RAID controller was at fault. It's just that my mobo
> appears damaged.
>
> Symptom: On boot, system never gets to bios black screen. Fans work,
> so I think the power supply is okay. I unplugged everything, one at a
> time, including the drives. Symptom remained.
>
> Therefore, I need to replace mobo with something that also uses the
> same RAID controller -- only because I need to get the data on the
> RAID-O hard drives.
>
> Previous to the current symptom, the computer would boot, but wouldn't
> power down / turn off. Instead, system would reboot. I undated the
> bios to 1007 last week. Didn't help.


Thumper:
It could be a defective motherboard of course. (BTW, just because the fans
are "spinning" that is no assurance the PSU is non-defective. So it could be
a failing or defective PS but the only *real* way to tell is to replace the
PSU with a known working one. Can you do that?).

We've installed that ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard (I assume that's the
model you're referring to) in a few dozen machines over the years and it's
proven to be a very reliable MB. As a matter of fact I can't think of
encountering a single failure with that MB. But it's possible of course
since it's an older board and its day has long since passed. Its last BIOS
update was about three years ago.

When you say you "unplugged everything" but still couldn't access the BIOS,
are you indicating that all you had connected at the time was your PSU,
processor, heatsink, RAM, video card, and keyboard? No other components? And
you still couldn't access the BIOS? You just got a black screen? No display
of any kind?

If that's the case it could be virtually any major component, including your
video card. I assume you've checked the connections all seems OK.

Anyway, also check out your HDDs in the meantime with a HDD diagnostic
utility from the manufacturer of the disks.
Anna

Problem: Asus A7N8X (deluxe) motherboard (aka mainboard, mobo) died,
leaving my RAID-0 stripe hard drive array homeless, as the HDDs relied
on the onboard Silicon Image SATA controller card (SiI 3112).

Solution: I bought a Syba PCI Serial ATA (SATA) Host Controller Card,
which had the exact same controller chip as the one that came with the
Asus motherboard. I installed the PCI card in an old PC. I connected
the two SATA hard drives (which were in a RAID-0 array on my dead
computer). I turned on PC. Windows XP detected the new hardware card.
I installed drivers from CD. I restarted. I can now see the striped
hard drives in My Computer. Success!

Thanks for all those who helped and especially to the guy who
suggested the PCI controller card.