NF7-S 3112A Hard Drive data corruption!
I'm using ABIT NF7-S v.2.0 motherboard w/ built in Sil 3112A SataRAID Controller. Have been using it peacefully with my 120GB Maxtor HDD for over a year now. I then got my hands on a 120GB WD HDD, and happilly plugged it in. Files that I transferred from my old HDD to my new one ends up being corrupted badly. I believed it to be my HDD problem, so I decided to change it but the store didn't have any other in stock so I paid extra cash to upgrade to a 200GB WD HDD.
The weird thing is now that the problem persists, but very discreetly. Last time, movie files which i copied over were visually distorted and the comp usually hangs when i play them. now, they look perfect. however, when i transfer a zipped file over, they cannot be unzipped because they are corrupted when in the new drive. argh!
worst part is when i use Western Digital's diagnostic tool as well as the "Diskcheckup" program, they read my new drive wrongly. the first thinks that i have 2 Maxtor drives, the WD diagnostic tool thinks that i have a USB drive!
huh!??! what's going on? i just flashed the latest bios from Abit for my mobo, but it doesn't seem to work. i can't check whether my SATA flash has been updated to the latest version (4.2.5.0) coz windows XP reads the info in the properties page as "Unknown". what am i supposed to do??? pls help!!
The weird thing is now that the problem persists, but very discreetly. Last time, movie files which i copied over were visually distorted and the comp usually hangs when i play them. now, they look perfect. however, when i transfer a zipped file over, they cannot be unzipped because they are corrupted when in the new drive. argh!
worst part is when i use Western Digital's diagnostic tool as well as the "Diskcheckup" program, they read my new drive wrongly. the first thinks that i have 2 Maxtor drives, the WD diagnostic tool thinks that i have a USB drive!
huh!??! what's going on? i just flashed the latest bios from Abit for my mobo, but it doesn't seem to work. i can't check whether my SATA flash has been updated to the latest version (4.2.5.0) coz windows XP reads the info in the properties page as "Unknown". what am i supposed to do??? pls help!!
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Comments
It will not tell you in Windows what SI 3112A Bios version you are running. That information however will be listed upon POST (when you first turn your computer on) when the SI 3112A dialogue flashes up. You'll obviously need the controller enabled in the main BIOS for it to show up.
Also, presuming both your HD's are SATA, make sure you're using the latest Silicon Image 3112A controller drivers.
http://www.short-media.com/download.php?dc=46
Ideally, you want to run your controller in RAID mode, if given the choice, and then obviously use the RAID drivers in Windows, the latest being v1.0.0.51. You don't have to have a RAID array configured to use the SI 3112A controller in RAID mode. RAID mode essentially just means fully turned on.
I have the exact same board as you in my primary rig, so I should be able to sort this out for you. Or at the very least tell you what the problem is.
At first guess, I imagine you just need to update your drivers.
I had 1 120gb Hitachi drive on its own IDE channel
1 200gb WD drive as master on channel 2
1 250gb Maxtor drive as slave on channel 2
whenever I transferred files between the maxtor and the WD drive anything I transferred would be corrupted. this made me REALLY MAD because I ended up losing some of my music.
so, I went and replaced my 200gb WD (the drive all the corruption had been centered around, and it'd had data corruption problems before) with a brand new 250gb WD, only to find that I was having the exact same issues.
so, since the last time I had this problem I had replaced my controller card and all my IDE cables, I assumed those weren't the issue.
what I ended up noticing was that when I was logged in as the administrator account and not as my user, there was no data corruption
my advice, if spinner's latest drivers don't work is this : see if this happens with all startup programs turned off, in other words if it happens in safe mode. its possible that something you have running is accidently interfering with data transfer between your drives
'Baron, did you ever get to the bottom of the problem? Did you ever narrow it down to a specific program or component?