Sil 3112 Sata Raid Controller PCI Card

[dickh81]

Where can I buy a Sil 3112 Sata Raid Controller PCI Card?

I am trying to recover data from 2 drives setup in a RAID array which was initiated origninally as a Stripe set. Both drives work, format was "done" (accidentally when trying to reinstall the operating system), but when the drives were just seen by the system as "healthy", nothing more was done to the drives. The old MB was an ASUS, which included the Silicon Image Sil 3112A controller chipset and 2 Serial ATA interfaces. I the old MB also working with another non-RAID drive, but the same MB where the 2 Maxtor 80 Gig drives were seen before, no longer sees them - I'm not entirely sure why, as the drivers are there in XP Pro (with SP3). I hope to recover some data from the drives.

Please let me know if you can suggest a point to buy the controller card and any other ideas related to recovery of data in a situation like this one.

dickh@4holliday.de

Thanks!!!

Dick

 

[sub mesa]

You don't really need to buy such a poor and obsolete PCI card to recover your data. Simply recover using Linux procedure, which i described here:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-252965_14_0.html#t1781278

 

[dickh81]

Great idea! I did get Linux working, but can't get the wireless linked yet - sees network, but won't connect! I'll keep working on that but I thought the mdadm might be on the Linux OS disk - apparently not even though it is listed as you noted. Anyway, Linux look super - I may try to set it up as a second OS on my system, but (maybe due to NTSF formatting) the disk partitioning didn't work. I did get the OS on a USB stick, but when I specify USB-zip, it still bypasses the system and jumps to windows. I have 3 start defaults, and the second is the CD while the last is the HD.

BTW, I presume it is appropriate to have the 2 RAID drives from which I'm trying to recover attached to the system - nothing is being done to them, but Linux inspected them and found all was in order - just to say they are healthy drives. The system if it ultimately sees them, will see them as empty, but I'm hopeful that there is some undelete utility I can use once I'm addressing them as a RAID system.

A thousand thanks from my chair to yours for the ideas & support!

Best,

Dick

 

[dickh81]

You don't really need to buy such a poor and obsolete PCI card to recover your data. Simply recover using Linux procedure, which i described here:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-252965_14_0.html#t1781278

I don't know if you saw my reply in the forum, but, I came back to you after seeing your comments:

Great idea! I did get Linux working, but can't get the wireless linked yet - sees network, but won't connect! I'll keep working on that but I thought the mdadm might be on the Linux OS disk - apparently not even though it is listed as you noted. Anyway, Linux look super - I may try to set it up as a second OS on my system, but (maybe due to NTSF formatting) the disk partitioning didn't work. I did get the OS on a USB stick, but when I specify USB-zip, it still bypasses the system and jumps to windows. I have 3 start defaults, and the second is the CD while the last is the HD.

BTW, I presume it is appropriate to have the 2 RAID drives from which I'm trying to recover attached to the system - nothing is being done to them, but Linux inspected them and found all was in order - just to say they are healthy drives. The system if it ultimately sees them, will see them as empty, but I'm hopeful that there is some undelete utility I can use once I'm addressing them as a RAID system.

A thousand thanks from my chair to yours for the ideas & support!

Best,

Dick
++++++++++
As of this time, I've still not got Linux talking to the DSL modem directly, despite it being seen. Linux, for WiFi connection poses more queries than Windows or Leapord, so even though I've told it the right user name & password, it must need something outside my tech range - which is fairly good - I've generally been able to make iPAQs/phones/computers, etc. link together. Anyway, ideas are welcome on this subject as I'm anxious to try getting back a bit of data from these drives to solve some admin issues at home!

BTW, your quote is one of the excellent ones I have on my board of favorite sayings - given that you have that one, I hope you've also read a bit of HL Mencken - lots of great commentary!

Dick

 

[sub mesa]

A simple solution would be to connect your laptop by ethernet cable instead of wireless, to transfer the files. You can also use a separate external disk via USB formatted with NTFS to put your files on, so you would not need any networking. You might need it however because i don't know if mdadm is installed on the livecd. It probably is, but i'm not sure about that. If its not, try the ethernet solution.

Maybe you can go to a friend who has a NAT router so you can just plug the ethernet cable without any need to configure anyting.

Thanks about the remark about the quote - yes i like such quotes, though ive used it for some time now maybe i should pick another one for some diversity. ;-)

 

[dickh81]

A simple solution would be to connect your laptop by ethernet cable instead of wireless, to transfer the files. You can also use a separate external disk via USB formatted with NTFS to put your files on, so you would not need any networking. You might need it however because i don't know if mdadm is installed on the livecd. It probably is, but i'm not sure about that. If its not, try the ethernet solution.

Maybe you can go to a friend who has a NAT router so you can just plug the ethernet cable without any need to configure anyting.

Thanks about the remark about the quote - yes i like such quotes, though ive used it for some time now maybe i should pick another one for some diversity. ;-)

+++++++++++++++++++
Hi, You motivated me and Linux - which I'm starting to like more and more - is now
1. Booting from a USB stick
2. Talking to the WiFi network
3. Giving me internet access (I'm conveying this message via Ubuntu / Firefox.

Unfortunately I do not seem to be 'out of the woods' yet, as the commands,
sudo mdadm --detail /dev/md0 gave nothing useful:

copy/paste from the terminal screen:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ mdadm --detail /dev/md0
mdadm: cannot open /dev/md0: No such file or directory

Also, looking at Places, there is no recognition that these 2 drives are connected to the system. Now I'm wondering about dual boots, but anyway, the 2 drives are seen by Windows. I'm going to reboot, and see if Ubuntu can inspect the drives as it did the first time, but what I'm afraid of is that as the response to the question "reformat?" was given as Y after the drives failed and I attempted to reinstall the OS (Win XP with SP3 - which was never installed), that removed something from track 0 that would allow an OS to address the drives. I'm just not sure, as both seem to work. Any ideas are welcome, and I'll check back here again in the next couple of hours.

Again my thanks - if nothing else, I'm now a Linux fan!

Dick

 

[dickh81]

Moving right along, I did some reshuffling of the drive connectors on the MB (Gigabyte - GA-EP45-DS3). The two 80 Gig Maxtor drives are at 0 and 1 while the 320Gig Seagate drive is at SAT 3. The first two drives - I looked at them in Windows drive check are reported as present and working, and the capacity of both is reported.

I played with a few commands to see if the mdadm command would work. The command as you typed,

sudo mdadm --detail /dev/md0 gives the following:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mdadm --detail /dev/md0^[[2~
mdadm: cannot open /dev/md0[2~: No such file or directory

Any ideas are welcome - it could be something simple in terms of turning on something in the bios, so I'm looking at that option as well, since the CMOS setup has the following still in default setup:
SATA RAID/AHCI Mode1 (Intel ICH10R Southbridge) disabled (disabled configures the SATA controllers to PATA mode - default)
SATA AHCI Mode2 (Intel ICH10 Southbridge) disabled
SATA Port0-3 Native Mode, I need to check, but the notes here say if disabled it allows the SATA controllers to operate in Legacy IDE mode (enabled allows Navive IDE mode - effective for Win XP), which is effectively what I've been doing via the Seagate drive noted above.

My next parry at the windmill is to enable SATA AHCI Mode2 (Intel ICH10 Southbridge), make sure SATA Port0-3 Native Mode is enabled, disconnect the Seagate drive and boot via the USB to here, and see if Linux can then address the drives. I have a 500 Gig passport drive to drop out any data it can see, but anyway that's a bridge I look forward to crossing when I get to it.

Best regards,
Dick

 

[dickh81]

Question regarding the RAID - as you noted there are 4 basic settings and potentially Linux could correctly re-establish the proper setup of the previous RAID setup, however, in order to do that it would need to have the data that was there before in the tracks found. I am guessing that the formatting, even though no other data was written to other tracks, may have wiped out the RAID information from the original RAID stripe set. If that is true, then I'm afraid I'm back to square one, and the board solution may be the only way to re-establish the alignment needed.

Again, anybody is welcome to comment here as I have no valid frame of reference to know if I'm right or wrong.

Thanks for listening!

Dick