By Philip Churchill on May 29th, 2010
WHS and the SI3114 SATA controller
A Windows Home Server enthusiast wanted to add a SI3114 SATA controller to his Home server to add its 4 SATA ports to the system. Apart from the problem trying to find the appropriate driver for this particular Silicon Image controller card he also had the card froze his WHS at a prompt that said Press CTRL + S or F4 to enter the RAID utility. As the card has onboard bios and NEEDS the presence of a non raid bios to operate in Home Server correctly, the blogger managed to flash the cards bios with a non raid version which he managed to option…
You can carry on following his adventures here.
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The picture of a SI3114 card that you use in this post – do you know exactly what card this is and where I might be able to get one in the UK?
It looks like it might be just what I’m looking for – and the fact that it connects to the host SATA rather than via a PCI slot is particularly appealing (all my PCI slots are in use – but I could fit this card “over” the AGP slot) 😉
Any clues would be great!!
I’m a WHS user and had a similar problem with the 2 port version of this card. I went though all the same steps with no luck (http://rbonini.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/help-needed-silicon-image-sil-3512-satalink-controller-bios-flash/)
The short version is that the card works perfectly under Windows 7 ( I’ve stressed tested it to be sure). So I guess that an upgrade to Windows Home Server Vail will solve this problem ( since Vail is built on Windows server 2008 and shares the Windows 7 codebase).
I’m too chicken to install Vail on my production WHS machine and don’t have any spare hardware to test that little theory out.
The long version is that the error log states:
“The device, \Device\Scsi\SI3112r1, did not respond within the timeout period.”
As far as I can see there is no way to extend/remove this timeout period unless your BIOS/RAID supports it.
So there you have it.
Hi Slimboyfat,
Unfortunately it’s a image I just picked up on Google, and on looking their are no clues on the manufacturer etc.
Hi
yesterday i received this controller from ebay. (http://cgi.ebay.ch/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260420421443&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT).
and today i have it succesful installed with one sata hard drive. no raid setup.
greets
Hi Marco, I’ve seen the card you installed on e-Bay too…. I’ve got a couple of questions about your setup….
What is performance like (and how well it works) with more than one drive attached?
Are you booting from the drive attached to the card or just using it as a means of getting additional SATA ports?
What OS are you using – is it in your WHS?
Cheers
Jack
Hi Slimboyfat
At the moment, i’m only using one hdd at the card. and only as a additional hdd (no boot).
the performance is “normal” i notice no difference, but with what program can i test it?
yes, WHS.
Greets