SiI 3112A + Seagate HDs = still no go?

[bootc]

Hi all,

I just recently took the plunge and bought 4 250 GB Seagate drives and a 2 port Silicon Image 3112A controller card for the 2 drives my motherboard doesn't handle. No matter how hard I try, I can't get the hard drives to work: they are detected correctly and work reasonably well under _very_ light load, but anything like building a RAID array is a bit much and the whole controller seems to lock up.

I can't remember the exact kernel messages, and I've unplugged the drives for now, but they were exactly like those in the following posts:
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-ide@v ... 00958.html
http://www.thisishull.net/archive/index ... 21928.html

All of these people seemed to be having trouble a good while ago, and other than the blacklist fix (which I have tried...) there seem to be no solutions to the problem at all. I can't seem to find any PCI controller cards not based on the SiI chipset (even the expensive ones) to replace my current card, either.

Needless to say the drives on my internal VIA controller work like a charm.

Has anyone run unto this problem? Any fixes?

Many thanks,
Chris

[coolsnowmen]

Has anyone run unto this problem? Any fixes?

I ran into this exact problem a year ago. From finding other people with the same problem, I am convinced it is a hardware/software incompatibility of linux/Sil 3112?...sata controller/and seagate SATA drive.
My solution, bought a WD drive, and moved the Seagate to my other computer (with a Intel Corporation 82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller (rev 02) this is onboard so i dont know if you can get a pcicard version.). WD has the least incompatibilities, I would return the seagate if you can. I have no idea if this has been fixed since Aug2004...but based on your experiance, ...it appears not.

[bootc]

I ran into this exact problem a year ago. From finding other people with the same problem, I am convinced it is a hardware/software incompatibility of linux/Sil 3112?...sata controller/and seagate SATA drive.
My solution, bought a WD drive, and moved the Seagate to my other computer (with a Intel Corporation 82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller (rev 02) this is onboard so i dont know if you can get a pcicard version.). WD has the least incompatibilities, I would return the seagate if you can. I have no idea if this has been fixed since Aug2004...but based on your experiance, ...it appears not.

It seems as though it may in fact be an incompatibility with this combination, but unfortunately I can't return the drives (nor do I want to), and can't seem to find a non-SiI controller at all. I'm working on it on the LKML and Linux-IDE lists: http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-ide@v ... 01405.html

[Crisis]

I had the same problem and it drove me crazy. I ended up getting a nice 4 port promise card from newegg for about $40 maybe, it was a good investment as my sata raid smokes now.

(Plus the promise card has NCQ support but the sil ones dont)

[Crisis]

Actually it's $53. It is the PROMISE SATAII150 TX4 PCI SATA Controller Card - OEM and it is a great sata card for linux. (If you don't want to pay the big bucks for hardware raid).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816102042

[/carlito]

There are seagate drives whichare blacklisted by the sata_sil kernel driver. Mine was to, so i removed it from the blacklist in the kernel driver. Now it works just fine. Not sure if this was a good solution, but i'm using it for about 4 months now, and never ran into any troubles.

Take a look at /usr/src/linux/drivers/scsi/sata_sil.c and see if your drives are blacklisted. You could try to remove them from the blacklist, and recompile your kernel.

Be aware that this is a very risky operation that could possibly damage your hardware!! So be carefull.

Greetz.

[riven]

Get a new controller. I had this problem with a Seagate on an Sil3112 controller. The drive is now on an nvidia sata controller and works great!