8RDA6 pro RAID 5 problem

[alternety]

A while back I installed some SATA drives on the Silicon Image controller. I only had 2 drives so I did not bother trying RAID. I just added a third drive and I can not get RAID 5 to work. When I initially installed the SATA I updated to the last available firmware and drivers from EPOX.

After much poking about, it seems that there are two separate sets of firmware and drivers for the 3114 chip. Raid 5 and other. There are also later versions on the SI web site. Well OK, that seems easy. Not exactly. The firmware file contains 3 versions. Two for different plug in cards and one for chips built into the mother board. The latter (which ought to be the applicable one) however says this is an OEM version and I should get this file from the manufacturer of the motherboard. Well, we know how well that is going to work out. Has anyone used this firmware on an 8RDA6 pro? Any other suggestions.

Next possible issue - I have Samsung 750 GB drives installed. There are problems when you use these with some Nvidia chip sets. I am kinda assuming that using the SI chip on an Nvidia board is not really using the nvidia chip; so it may not be a problem. If you look through the pieces in the firmware loader, there are statements identifying "problem drives" and disabling command queuing. This happens to be just what the problem is with nvidia chips. Does anyone know what the parts of these problem statements represent so I can add a statement to do it for my drives. Or another way to change that manually after installation?http://www.aoaforums.com/forum/image...s/banghead.gif

[Wolf2000me]

Actually the SI chip on the 8RDA6+Pro has never officially supported RAID-5. There has been a bios version which *supposedly* had support for RAID-5 but I've only seen it get posted once with beta and unofficial status applied to it, IIRC. I also never tried it myself.
Perhaps dropping wild_andy_c a PM might help you out as he was the bloke who posted it. He was the resident Epox employee back then and posted under Epox Tech.

The 8RDA6+Pro Nvraid and SI chip have never supported NCQ or TCQ.
The command queueing option in the operating system is for SCSI devices and does nothing. The official mainboard drivers should work for you but there have always been minor issues, as with every version they ever released. Sometimes controller channels get set to PIO or a lower DMA level. Other than that I have never had a problem with it and I ran it for several years.

Generally when using a more mainstream RAID0/1 the performance is better on the NV RAID chip.

[alternety]

The SI site does provide "official" firmware and software for RAID 5. And it does show command queuing. A short while after I posted this thread my machine went to a blue screen reporting a hardware error. It is kind of like what happens with the command queuing. The Samsung drives are my only change in quite a while. I have them pulled out. I had Hitachi's in there for about 6 months with no problems. Coincidences always bother me.

[Wolf2000me]

I did some digging, would have been easier if you had posted your dig, as I do seem to confirm your findings partly. I'll clarify

Below you'll find three pages from SI, which you've obviously seen before. One page shows a BIOS update for RAID 5, this is true. However I'm afraid you're out of luck, the update needs to be embedded in a general BIOS update released by the motherboard manufacturer. In our case Epox, which doesn't exist anymore.
The DOS update utility is for PCI cards using the SI3114 chip as controller.

It is advertised in their product catalog supporting RAID level 0,1 and 1/0. This is probably why I assumed that the 8RDA6+ Pro would not support RAID 5 correctly.

Obviously we shouldn't really wait for an update out of official channels but there have been several mods made by Merlin, search this thread if you're still interested after reading all the rest:

8RDA6+ Pro Romsip Mod

Merlin released one BIOS mod which contained RAID 5 support, which is highly irregular as he normally only mods general system bios parameters. I tested a few versions for him, none really better than the first mod.
The modding situation is described in the 2nd post of the thread mentioned earlier but as I said earlier, I never tried the version with RAID 5 support embedded. I didn't really feel like losing the volumes
I mentioned Andy earlier as he might know more about getting the RAID 5 bios in the SI chip and he also hosted the bios version with raid 5 embedded.

So, long story short... If you really want RAID 5 support and feel like going for a serious long shot I won't keep you

Any more questions, by all means ask

edit: About the command queuing...
I really don't think it's going to be a problem. Command queuing on SATA disks sounds like NCQ or TCQ, which is not supported by the latest official BIOS from Epox.
I also ran 2 different types of disks in RAID on both the nvidia or si raid chip. Only problem I had with it was a busted nvidia chip on the board, doa.

SI 3114 product page

SI product listing
The one we're interested in is at the bottom of the document.

The Firmware/Driver/utilities update page

[alternety]

Thanks for the response. The documentation for the 8RDA6 Pro (and the box, etc.) actually specified RAID5. That is actually one of the reasons I chose that particular board. Few (if any) boards were advertising RAID 5 at the time. It appears to have always been "supported" for that board. I am not sure I want to use the Merlin mod. I had been tracking that for quite some time, and the last ones I saw had some real annoying things in them that I decided I did not want to put up with. The revision dates from SI are much newer than the last time Merlin posted a BIOS. I still don't think I want to risk that.

I looked into the files I downloaded from SI. There is a section that lists "problem drives" and disables command queuing if it finds one. There are two items in the instruction line, and I don't know how to create that data.

This is, I believe the firmware for the SI chip and may not ever have been fooled with by Epox. That is one of the things I would like to find out.

I will try asking SI. I thought I would start from the motherboard side. I really would like to run RAID 5 without buying a new system. If I built a new one I would have to replace just about everything to go to current standards (RAM, graphics [I have AGP], maybe drives (I still have two PATA), I need two parallel ports and the card I have is PCI, etc.)

As I mentioned, I had BSD after installing the Samsung drives. I have had this thing running for quite a while without that happening. I took them out and have had no recurrence. I really hate coincidence. Particularly as there are well known problems with Samsung F series drives, command queuing, and Nvidia chip sets.

[Áedán]

The BIOS 'image' (IE, what you would have downloaded from EPoX) also contains the ROM image for the SI chip. In theory, it is possible to modify the BIOS image and replace the SI ROM image with a more up to date one. Once you've done that, you can then reflash the BIOS with the new image.

That would bring the SI ROM up to date, which /should/ then work ok with the newer drivers. This, of course, is somewhat theoretical, and the pratice might work out different.

If you choose to try this, then ensure you have a full system backup (for when things break), and ensure you have a spare programmed FLASH chip (for when the BIOS flashing breaks).

[Wolf2000me]

Originally Posted by alternety

Thanks for the response. The documentation for the 8RDA6 Pro (and the box, etc.) actually specified RAID5. That is actually one of the reasons I chose that particular board. Few (if any) boards were advertising RAID 5 at the time. It appears to have always been "supported" for that board. I am not sure I want to use the Merlin mod. I had been tracking that for quite some time, and the last ones I saw had some real annoying things in them that I decided I did not want to put up with. The revision dates from SI are much newer than the last time Merlin posted a BIOS. I still don't think I want to risk that.

I looked into the files I downloaded from SI. There is a section that lists "problem drives" and disables command queuing if it finds one. There are two items in the instruction line, and I don't know how to create that data.

This is, I believe the firmware for the SI chip and may not ever have been fooled with by Epox. That is one of the things I would like to find out.

I will try asking SI. I thought I would start from the motherboard side. I really would like to run RAID 5 without buying a new system. If I built a new one I would have to replace just about everything to go to current standards (RAM, graphics [I have AGP], maybe drives (I still have two PATA), I need two parallel ports and the card I have is PCI, etc.)

As I mentioned, I had BSD after installing the Samsung drives. I have had this thing running for quite a while without that happening. I took them out and have had no recurrence. I really hate coincidence. Particularly as there are well known problems with Samsung F series drives, command queuing, and Nvidia chip sets.

You might have better luck buying a PCI RAID card which'll give you RAID 5, IMHO.
It's going to be much less of a headache if you ask me. In terms of performance if you buy for example a RocketRaid card or a card with an SI chip you should be on par. The SI chip is running on the PCI bus anyway.

Good luck

[alternety]

Thanks for all the replys. If it gets too complicated I will just ignore it until I next build a machine in a year or so. I will poke around a bit more. If I can determine that Epox just used the straight OEM SI BIOS, I may be OK.

[Wolf2000me]

Originally Posted by alternety

Thanks for all the replys. If it gets too complicated I will just ignore it until I next build a machine in a year or so. I will poke around a bit more. If I can determine that Epox just used the straight OEM SI BIOS, I may be OK.

If you do, by all means post it

[Áedán]

awdbedit should be able to extract the ROM files quite happily - the last one that I saw from Merlin had the 5139 SI BIOS embedded in it. Using awdbedit, you should find the SI BIOS is in the "PCI Driver [C]" section. SI provide a BIOS download that appears to include the BIOS file for manufacturers, as opposed to end users.

I've quickly thrown in an OEM BIOS (5314) into the last Merlin BIOS (19.01.06 CPC-1T) that I could find. If you have a spare FLASH chip, you may wish to try it. If you do not have a spare flash chip, I'd recommend you do not try it. I've not tested it. It may not work at all. Try at your own risk.

Odd note: the readme with Merlin's BIOS suggests it's using SI's 5216 BIOS. However, the ROM file itself appears to be 5139?