A8N - SLI Deluxe - Silicon Image Controller Behavior

[Mattchewie]

Hello Everyone!

Just recently did some minor upgrads to my machine and some questions
have arose because of such.

I'm setting into this SLI board from a A7N8XE (might of been a deluxe
too) but that Mainboard only had the one controller and 2 SATA links and
I didn't have raid going on the drives I just had one drive boot
windows, the other linux and it worked like a regular PATA system
....just without the worry of jumpers ;P.

Well Now I have the SLI board and I tried the same thing but...no go!

The machine will boot, then go into the Sli BIOS (it sees the 2 drives)
and ...here is where it gets a bit weird...it tells me "No Valide Device
present" or something to that effect...but it sees the 2 drives!

I then start up windows, load the drivers for the controller off the
floppy and then...windows setup tells me no HD's are present.

Now I'm writing this because as of now I'm using the Nvid SATA
controller which..is doing alright but IMHO I prefer the Sil controllers .

So yeah, if anyeone has any input that would be great! I see alot
dealing with the Nvid controller but not too much on the Sil controller.

Other than that the machine is running GREAT!


PS. Please ignore any typos that might have occured whilst I typed this.
Its 2:18AM and I have been working on this machine since 2PM yesterday.

--
AMD Athlon64 3000+
ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe
BFGTech Nvidia 6600GT OC
420W Raid Max PSU
1 Gig PC2700 (generic need to upgrade
2 Seagate ST380013AS 80GIG SATA
Sound Blaster Live!
Liteon DVD/Cdrw 16x52x32x52
LG 8x Multi DVD+ - r/rw/ram

 

[Harry]

The controller wants to set up the drives in a RAID configuration. I
don't know if the Si controller has the same settings as the Nvidia in
the bios to turn off RAID and use it as a plain SATA controller. I had
to disable the RAID function on the Nvidia controller in BIOS to use
it this way. Hope this helps.

 

[Mattchewie]

The controller wants to set up the drives in a RAID configuration. I
don't know if the Si controller has the same settings as the Nvidia in
the bios to turn off RAID and use it as a plain SATA controller. I had
to disable the RAID function on the Nvidia controller in BIOS to use
it this way. Hope this helps.

Yeah from searching around I think the Sil 3114 controller on this board
only accepts disks in a RAID configuration. So, I think using it as
primary, secondardy ...etc etc is out the window. I'm going to call ASUS
today and verify that today. I will post my findings.

--
AMD Athlon64 3000+
ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe
BFGTech Nvidia 6600GT OC
1 Gig PC2700 (generic need to upgrade
2 Seagate ST380013AS 80GIG SATA
Sound Blaster Live!
Liteon DVD/Cdrw 16x52x32x52
LG 8x Multi DVD+ - r/rw/ram

 

[Ben Pope]

Yeah from searching around I think the Sil 3114 controller on this
board only accepts disks in a RAID configuration. So, I think using
it as primary, secondardy ...etc etc is out the window. I'm going to
call ASUS today and verify that today. I will post my findings.

That would be weird, the Sil3112 supports non RAID (as you know).

To be fair, you might as well use the nForce4 controller:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2358&p=16

Ben

 

[Rob Stow]

That would be weird, the Sil3112 supports non RAID (as you know).

To be fair, you might as well use the nForce4 controller:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2358&p=16

The Sil3114 controller on the Tyan S2885 works just fine in a
non-RAID mode. Two of the systems I have built around that
board have a Plextor DVD burner and a 250 GB SATA HDD.

My only problem with that controller has been in trying to set up
a bootable 0+1 for someone.

 

[RJT]

Yeah from searching around I think the Sil 3114 controller on this board
only accepts disks in a RAID configuration. So, I think using it as
primary, secondardy ...etc etc is out the window. I'm going to call ASUS
today and verify that today. I will post my findings.

Select the JBOD option - it means: Just a Bunch Of Discs. Which it is,
when not running raid, just a bunch of discs. Should work nicely.

 

[milleron]

Select the JBOD option - it means: Just a Bunch Of Discs. Which it is,
when not running raid, just a bunch of discs. Should work nicely.

That's what I thought, but someone has said that selecting JBOD simply
spans the drives so that they appear as one big one. For example,
connecting an 80Gb and a 120GB in JBOD would make them appear in the
OS as a single 200GB drive rather than as the two separate drives
which the OP wants.
I haven't purchased my A8N-SLI yet, so can any present owners chime in
on how JBOD works on this board?

Ron

 

[Matthew Galloway Jr]

Select the JBOD option - it means: Just a Bunch Of Discs. Which it is,
when not running raid, just a bunch of discs. Should work nicely.

I can't believe I over looked the JBOD setting! That is exactly what it
needed to work. My A7N8X-E was just plug it in and go so I wasn't even
thinking about looking for a JBOD in the Sil bios! Thanks RJT!

After adding my discs through the JBOD, the windows installer found them
find and the Silicon Image Bios stopped reporting "No vailde device"
(not the typo in vaild is in the bios ;P)

Thanks guys for your help. I called Asus and all they could tell me is
"it should work" and didn't mention adding the disks. I have plans to
follow up on my case number for their records as I know it must be hard
to keep up with all the mainboards they have and their configs!

 

[Robert Hancock]

Now I'm writing this because as of now I'm using the Nvid SATA
controller which..is doing alright but IMHO I prefer the Sil controllers .

So yeah, if anyeone has any input that would be great! I see alot
dealing with the Nvid controller but not too much on the Sil controller.

The NVIDIA SATA controller will likely be faster - the Silicon Image
controller is connected to the PCI bus..

 

[RJT]

That's what I thought, but someone has said that selecting JBOD simply
spans the drives so that they appear as one big one. For example,
connecting an 80Gb and a 120GB in JBOD would make them appear in the
OS as a single 200GB drive rather than as the two separate drives
which the OP wants.
I haven't purchased my A8N-SLI yet, so can any present owners chime in
on how JBOD works on this board?

Possibly so. The Silicon controller also has the 'spare drive' option.
It's not documented in the manual, at least I can't find anything on it,
but it would seem to me it will not select the connected drive for a
RAID array.