Hi, I bought a couple of these to expand my storage to 10 2TB drives and installed them in my unRaid Server.

 

For some reason unRaid only detects one drive on each controller card rather than the 2 connected. I have double checked cables and all seems connected fine and the drive caddies all have power. I assume it is a driver issue as the jumpers are all in the correct positions.

 

The cards do come with a driver disk but I no nothing about Linux so wondered if anyone could explain how to install them on my Flash drive?

 

The opions are:

 

Fedora

Mac

RedHat <--- this one right?

SuSe

Win64

Win32

 

Under Redhat I have folders for:

 

RedHat_ENT40_32bit

RedHat_ENT40_64bit

RedHat_ENT41_32bit

RedHat_ENT41_64bit

 

Inside the first of these I have the following:

 

grub (folder)

lilo (folder)

old (folder)

initial_install.sh

load-driver-from-floppy.sh

modules.cgz

RedHat_3132_INSTALL.txt

SiI.id.txt

upgrade_driver.sh

 

I am a total nube at this so any help would be great

 

Thanks.

 

Adam

Those drivers would not be compatible with unRAID.

 

If the manufacturer supplied source code, and if you set up a development instance of Slackware with exactly the same kernel, and copied the .config from the unRAID distribution to it, and then compiled a unRAID version, it might work.  (assuming no other compatibility issues)

 

Unfortunately, it is not a task for the newbie.  You cannot just install their drivers on the flash drive.

Hi Joe,

 

Thanks for the help.

 

Is it normal to require the drivers for this sort of thing? I thought this chipset was supported by unRaid?

 

Cheers,

 

Adam

This is the exact card I purchased if that is of any use.

 

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_4472.html

 

Adam

I will suggest you start with a single card. Check to see if both drives will be visible during the boot and in Unraid.

 

If not you may have purchased cards with Raid firmware by default and you will have to flash the card's BIOS with a non-RAID one.

 

It is easier to do in another Windows computer.

 

Instructions are provided on the Silicon Image web site here - http://www.siliconimage.com/support/faq.aspx and the files are here - http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=32&cat=15&os=0

 

The latest firmware is from 09/09/2009 and the non-RAID BIOS is the file with name: b7703.bin

 

Then try again - it should work now and you do not have to install any drivers.

 

The card may not work if used in the big PCIe x16 slot often used for video cards but should not have problems in the others smaller PCIe

You star, I'll give that a go over the weekend

 

Thanks,

 

Adam

When you boot there should be some option to hit a key and get into the card set-up. Maybe something like F8? Do that and see if both drives show up in the set-up for the card. Also, you can check that the card is set to JBOD for the disks.

 

Peter

 

Hi Chaps,

 

I seem to be struggling with what should be very simple.

 

I have attached one card (EDIT: but no drives) and using the Utility I can identify it as follows:

 

C:\>SiFlashTool /v

 

Silicon Image Flash BIOS programming tool version 1.0

Controller Type   PCI Location    Flash Part           BIOS Ver.   BIOS Date
=============================================================================
  Sil 3132       Bus:05 Dev:00   UNKNOWN              7.4.05      10-05-2006

 

I then use the tool to Flash the adapter:

 

C:\>SiFlashTool /File:b7703.bin

 

Silicon Image Flash BIOS programming tool version 1.0
Selected Sil 3132 on PCI bus: 0x05 device: 0x00

 

Nothing seems to happen? I recheck the adapter and the same Bios date is shown.

 

Silicon Image Flash BIOS programming tool version 1.0
Usage: SiFlashTool [/busNum:xx /DevNum:xx] [/File:filespec] [/v]
where:
   BusNum / DevNum     These parameters specify the PCI bus and device number
                       respectively of a Silicon Image storage controller.
                       These parameters only need to be used if there is more
                       than one Silicon Image storage controller in the system.

   File:               This parameter specifies the path and name of the
                       BIOS image file to be programmed.

   /V                  This switch causes the program to only display the
                       version number of a controller's BIOS.  No BIOS image
                       is programmed when this switch is used.  The /File
                       parameter is ignored if specified along with this
                       switch.  If /BusNum and/or /Devnum are specified,
                       then only the BIOS versions of controller's at the
                       specified PCI locations are displayed.

 

Any ideas? Thanks

 

BTW there is a Bios boot message about the adapter but no tip on what to select to access it.

 

Adam

You need to power cycle after flashing firmware in many cases.

Many of those cards have a read-only memory device instead of a writable memory device and therefore they can not be reflashed. It must be cheaper to do this I guess. The chip with the RAID sticker is the memory.

 

People here have said that the card will work with the RAID firmware but I ran into one that either would not work or was not compatible with my motherboard for some reason. I could read from the attached drive but the data being read back was corrupt.

 

Peter

 

I did try a power cycle and no joy... I bought 2 of these cards, bummer.

I'm surprised your cards don't work, since I've used several of these SIL3132 cards in several different builds.  They have all been plug and play, although I believe the most recent one I bought is defective as it has been giving me problems.

Earlier in this post you provided a link to the exact card you purchased.  On that page it says:

Can use 2 out of 4 ports at once, active ports set by onboard jumpers.

 

Is it possible the jumpers are set to use one internal port, and one external, rather than both internal ports?  That would easily explain the issues you are having.

I have a problem with one of my sil3132 cards.  It's the 2530 from Monoprice.  This card worked great in my Asus mobo but I've changed to the Biostar A760G M2+ and now it's acting up.  First, no drive was visible so I moved it from  the 16x PCIe slot to the 1x and I can see 2 drives.  But I was preclearing a drive in one of it's ports and it was like stuck on 0%.  So I'm going to do the firmware update on this card and see if it fixes it.

 

I have a second sil3132 card but it's the one with 2 eSata ports and it seems to be fine in either the 1x or 16x PCIe slot.  Odd.