Silicon Image 3114 SATA controller crashes with WD drives...

[Mini-Me]

Does anyone use a SI3114 SATA controller?

The one I have here, refuses to proceed past seeing the 750GB WD drives I try to put on it. The controller does see 80GB Seagates, and also one 320GB WD I have, but it won't go past the brand new 750GB ones.

Anyone got any ideas why?

SATA BIOS version 5.0.39

The controller correctly identifies the drive as a 750GB WD SATA, but then the controller just hangs, and Windows never boots.
The controller sees and then lets Windows boot with the other drives.
:confused:

ADDITIONAL: I have tried three different identical BRAND NEW WD drives, and exactly the same thing happens with all of them, so it is unlikely to be a drive problem, but perhaps the 3114 BIOS does not support such a size?

I have also tried putting the OPT1 jumper on pins 5 & 6, to manually limit the speed to SATA1 spec, but the card still refuses to proceed past the initial detection.

Does anyone know the capacity limit of the 3114 card?

[Mini-Me]

ADDITIONAL AGAIN: After hours of searching on the net, it would seem that this card has a BIOS issue, and any drive bigger then 500GB on any one port seems to crash the card, and subsequently, the computer.

I am now looking a a different card based on the 3124-2 chipset(still Silicon Image), which is a SATA2 controller with support for NCQ and other features. My hope is that this more up-to-date chip will get around this problem, and with a SATA2 BIOS, there should not be any issues, me hopes...

[Mini-Me]

I found something very important - you can reflash the on-board BIOS on these cards, but it MUST be done from DOS - NOT a DOS command-line under Windoze(even though a Windows command-line application is supplied) - you must setup and boot into plain old DOS(I used a Windows 95 boot disk), and from there, I was able to reflash the card.

I am now reflashing the 2nd one.
Two more, and I will be finished.

Importantly, reflashing gets around the capacity problem, and lets the card exit to continue to load Windoze...
:)

[Paul Komski]

Interesting about the flashing. Where did you get the download from?

[Mini-Me]

Interesting about the flashing. Where did you get the download from?

Just downloaded the new BIOS and update application from the Silicon Image website. Search for 3114 chip.