trouble with RAID 5 array on SiI 3114 controller

slackergirl

I've had a heck of a time setting up a RAID 5 array on my ASUS K8N-E deluxe MB with the onboard Silicon Image 3114 controller. I have 4 Seagate 250GB HDs connected. After following the advice in this post, I finally got the array up and running, formatted and transferred my data onto it. On my next reboot, I got an error message that the SiI controller was not found, and the driver was saying it was corrupted. Updated the driver (SiI 3114 SoftRaid 5 controller v1.4.3.0), reboot, and now the SiI Array Manager software pops up as usual, but my array (and data) are nowhere to be found. If I look in the BIOS Raid manager, it says the HDs are an invalid array, and SAM is saying I have all the space available, with 0B allocated as a spare on each drive. My BIOS is the latest non-beta available from ASUS. I'm not even sure it is a BIOS or driver problem, but a RAID 10 array I had set up as a test a while before seemed to run much more smoothly, so I don't think it's a hardware issue.

Anybody know of a way to get it working again and the data restored? (I stupidly didn't make a complete backup after transfering, so some of the newer data may be lost.) Or even better, why it may be so unstable and how I can fix that?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Armo

you can try to delete the raid from the bios and then add it back in, but i dont know the complete consequences of that.

slackergirl

Well, at this point I have nothing to lose, so I'll let you know how it turns out...

slackergirl

I deleted the array in the bios, and now SAM won't let me re-create it, or create a new array (of any type). I'm assuming it's gone. I'll have to start again, but this time I think I'll just make a 10 array in the BIOS. It seemed more stable and less likely to vanish. Thanks for the advice, though.