Firstly, apologies for my complete ignorance of all things linux related.

 

I have successfully built an UnRAID 4.4.2 box with the follwing components:

 

M/B: Asus M2N68-VM

CPU: AMD 4850E

Mem: 1Gb Corsair DDR2

HDD: 3x Seagate 1.5Tb

PSU: Corsair VX550

 

This has been working FANTASTICALLY, but now I have need to expand (dang uncompressed Blu-Ray rips!). I purchased a Skymaster 3124A 4-port PCI SATAII card (Sil3124-2), along with a new 1.5Tb drive, and installed them.

 

Unfortunately I cannot successfully boot into UnRAID (or even enter the BIOS setup!) when any drive is connected to this card. After the POST screen (whether I try to enter setup or not), the Sil3124 chipset notification comes up, and asks for a prompt to enter RAID setup (which I ignore). Following this, the screen goes black, and freezes. This is reproduced when ANY SATA drive is connected to the PCI card.

 

Curiously, if no drives are connected, the UnRAID box boots as per usual.

 

Given that the connection of ANY drive to this card gives this problem, I believe this to be card-related rather than drive-related. However, the fact that the system boots with the card connected (as long as no drives are plugged in) confuses me. After all, these problems occur even prior to UnRAID loading - I can't even enter the BIOS setup!

 

Any tips here would be greatly appreciated! Short of re-building entirely with a new M/B with way more on-board SATA ports, I'm not sure what to do next (as I'm very reluctant to buy another PCI SATA card given my current problems!).

 

Thank you!!

I think you are on the right track, it is the card setup that HAS to be dealt with.  You might go to the Silicon Image web site, to look for a manual for the card or 3124 chipset.  While there, check for a firmware update.  I suspect the RAID setup will include an option for something like 'No RAID' or JBOD.

Aha! When I first started with unRAID I got into the same issue. I didn't have time to install PCI cards into my PC just to flash the firmware - and it was confusing getting the right one at the time. So in the end I just sold ($10) my card to someone else who was going to be using it for a RAID setup anyway. I never heard back from him, even though he had my contact details and I encouraged him to get in touch if there were problems. My guess is that the card has a firmware that is set up for RAID. My card was a Sil3134, but the symptoms were exactly the same.

Here's the thread I started way back when:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1414.0 Server won't start with Sil3114 connected to a hard drive

 

Ah, I just re-read my thread. It was probably a case of old firmware that had a low drive capacity limit (possibly at 500 GB per drive). Updating the BIOS seemed to work for one other user.

Finally got this thing working!

 

I abandoned hope for a while, and just removed the extra drives as I didn't need the storage.

 

I read around a bit and it appears that there are a few devices that randomly don't work on certain PCI slots. So, I moved the PCI SATA card to the other PCI slot, and voila! Drives recognised, added to array no problems.

 

Now I'm just wondering whether I'll encounter the same problem if I buy ANOTHER PCI SATA card to use in the original slot - can only try it out!

 

Thanks for the help, guys.

COngrats on sorting it out. I wonder whether that was my original problem too?