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10.6.3 + sil3132 eSATA = broken? [Solution found]

Loa

Loa

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 5, 2003
1,733
79
Québec
Hello,

Title says it all: my card won't mount anything.

Loa

[Edit: scroll down for the solution]
 
Hello,

I do have the latest drivers... (Sonnet 1.1.1)

Gonna try and reinstall them and restart.

Loa
 
Loa said:
Hello,

I do have the latest drivers... (Sonnet 1.1.1)

Gonna try and reinstall them and restart.

Loa
Click to expand...
You could also try the latest drivers directly from Silicon Image (newer ones have been released since you first tried them IIRC). Oh, and they're both 32 and 64bit versions in the same file.
 
Hello,

Well I tried deleting and reinstalling the sonnet 1.1.11 drivers, then did the same thing with the sil3132 1.2.3.0 drivers. No luck.

The drive I'm using mounts perfectly fine in a USB2 enclosure, but won't mount at all (not even detected in disk utility) through the eSATA card.

Any ideas?

Loa
 
Loa said:
Hello,

Well I tried deleting and reinstalling the sonnet 1.1.11 drivers, then did the same thing with the sil3132 1.2.3.0 drivers. No luck.

The drive I'm using mounts perfectly fine in a USB2 enclosure, but won't mount at all (not even detected in disk utility) through the eSATA card.

Any ideas?

Loa
Click to expand...
You might have to try a clean install, as deleting the drivers didn't work. Beyond that, it may be dead hardware (card or enclosure, since the drive is accessible via another interface).
 
Check the system profiler. In the hardware section - open PCI Cards. Determine that the card is truly detected. My si3132 reports as a "pci1095,3132". Select it and see if the "Driver Installed:" section says "Yes". If the card doesn't show up at all, something is wrong with the card. If the driver is not installed, its a driver issue. If its a driver issue, make sure all previous drivers are gone from /System/Library/Extensions. Also, the 32 bit driver doesn't work on a system that is loading the kernel in 64-bit mode. Either install the 64-bit driver or switch the boot.plist to boot the kernel in 64-bit mode. You may also find more info by checking the logs in the Console.app

The same code that detects video cards detects other pci devices. If your video cards work, other pci devices should be detected - if they are functioning. Shouldn't need to reinstall the OS.
 
Hello,

Thanks for the info.

My card is identified exactly like yours, the Type is RAID controller, and the driver is installed.

Everything seems fine in the profiler, but still no cigar.

Loa
 
Yours reports as a RAID controller, mine reports a "Other Mass Storage Controller". Did you install the raid driver? There are two different versions.
 
Loa said:
Reinstall of the entire OS?

Loa
Click to expand...
Not if you don't have to. I meant uninstall the drivers, shutdown, pull the card, and reboot. Make sure everything else is OK.

Then proceed to install the card and drivers again.

I presumed you were trying to install the drivers needed (not sure if you're using single disk, JBOD or RAID functions). But the basic drivers (non RAID), will still work with RAID. You just use Disk Utility to create it; JBOD as well (if of course that's what you need/want to do). Otherwise you don't even have to do that much.

Assuming this doesn't work, then you can try a full OS install (could be necessary if the issue occured directly after upgrading to 10.6.3), but I'd suspect the card's died on you (presuming the card doesn't even show up under profiler, which it's currently doing).

However, as it's currently displaying under profiler, it presents as a software issue. Or possibly even the enclosure's shot (i.e. PM board died, assuming it actually uses one), but statistically speaking, software's more likely.
 
Hello,

Thx for the help guys, now it works. I have no idea what made it work, as I seem to have tried everything at least twice...

Strangely enough if I only installed the latest sil3132 1.2.3.0 (non-RAID) drivers, system profiler detected no drivers present. With the Sonnet 1.1.11, the profiler detected it and now it's working again.

------

Now for a secondary question: I will soon need a third eSATA port. Is there any reason I should shell out for the much publicized 60$ dual port card from newertech instead of a second cheap sil3132 card?

Thanks

Loa
 
Loa said:
Now for a secondary question: I will soon need a third eSATA port. Is there any reason I should shell out for the much publicized 60$ dual port card from newertech instead of a second cheap sil3132 card?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Assuming you're intending to use mechanical, then the SIL3132 would be fine, so get the second.

The newertech card is SATA 6.0Gb/s capable, but it's a 1x lane card. So it really needs a PCIe 2.0 slot to take advantage of the faster throughput (500MB/s).

Assuming the slot issue won't be a problem, it's a better choice if you wanted to run an external SSD, especially some of the newer ones, or drives not out just yet (SATA 6.0Gb/s compliant models). Otherwise, I'd skip it and save the money.

Good luck. :)
 
Hello,

I'm planning to use 2 of the ports for the dual drive eSATA (passthrough) enclosure from OWC, with two non-RAIDed 2TB green drives.

My only problem is that OWC charges me ~70% of the enclosure's price in shipping since I'm in Canada.

I'm still looking for a simple passthrough eSATA dual enclosure for cheaper, but I can't find one.

Loa
 
Hello,

New question: in a 2009 MP, does it make any difference at all for an eSATA card, which PCI-e slot you put it in?

Thanks

Loa
 
Loa said:
I'm still looking for a simple passthrough eSATA dual enclosure for cheaper, but I can't find one.
Click to expand...
I wish you luck. :)

Loa said:
New question: in a 2009 MP, does it make any difference at all for an eSATA card, which PCI-e slot you put it in?
Click to expand...
No.

But if you stuffed it in a 16x lane slot, it would mean you'd have to move it later if you get a card that needs that particular slot (i.e. 8x lane or 16x lane card of some kind). And that's only a matter of relocating the eSATA card, assuming there's an empty 4x lane slot open to accept it.
 
Hello,

The OWC enclosure looks great and its price is very nice, but they gouge their Canadian clients with shipping... I once called them to confirm that they would actually charge me 25$ shipping for 2 RAM chips!

I ordered a lot of stuff from the States these last few years, for RC stuff, and found some shops/people that overcharged on shipping. But OWC really steals that crown!

Anyway,

Thanks for the info.

Loa
 
Loa said:
Hello,

The OWC enclosure looks great and its price is very nice, but they gouge their Canadian clients with shipping... I once called them to confirm that they would actually charge me 25$ shipping for 2 RAM chips!

I ordered a lot of stuff from the States these last few years, for RC stuff, and found some shops/people that overcharged on shipping. But OWC really steals that crown!

Anyway,

Thanks for the info.

Loa
Click to expand...


Do you live close to the boarder? I just have stuff shipped to a UPS store right on the boarder in the states then pick it. 20 minutes, better sipping rates, and no extra taxes.
 
My sil3132 card only shows up intermittently in system profiler; when I shut the system down, reboot without the card, then shut it down again, insert the card, and reboot, it will detect the card in system profiler, and the RAID drivers from silicon images website work great; I could configure a 4TB raid array, format it, and copy files to it. If I warm-rebooted, the mac pro, I was fine; the card and array was still detected. But if I shut down the machine completely, then turned it back on, the card was not detected AT ALL in system profiler, so of course nothing worked and my drives did not mount.

Any ideas what is going on here?
 
Loa said:
Which drivers are you using? and which OS X?

Loa
Click to expand...

I'm running Snow Leopard in 64 bit mode (with all updates, version 10.6.4) and the latest Silicon Image RAID drivers for the card (version 1.7.2.0) driver date 1/27/2010. I don't think this is a driver problem, because the problem is the card is not detect at all at startup if booting from being off.

I get the exact same problem if I run SL in 32 bit mode. This problem is also reproducible; if I remove the card and reboot, then shut down and reinstall the card, it is detected and the drivers load and I'm fine until I shut the machine down again. Then the card will not be detected at all by the Mac (system profiler PCI cards shows only my graphics card).

Thanks for any help you can provide.
 
rdewey said:
I don't think this is a driver problem, because the problem is the card is not detect at all at startup if booting from being off.
Click to expand...

I think it is. I've never managed to get those sil3132 cards to work with Sil drivers. I've always used the sonnet drivers, in 32 bit mode.

I'd give those Sonnet drivers a try, you can find them on Sonnet's website, for their own 4port (2 + 2) eSATA cards.

Loa

P.S. By the way, when you boot in 32 bit, your 64 bit apps still launch as 64 bit. I've yet to see conclusive real world performance tests that demonstrate that 64bit boot gives better performance.
 
Loa said:
I think it is. I've never managed to get those sil3132 cards to work with Sil drivers. I've always used the sonnet drivers, in 32 bit mode.
Click to expand...

Thanks very much for your suggestion. I tried the Sonnet drivers as you suggested and I have the same behavior. The card will not be recognized after the mac pro is shut down completely and then restarted. I have to take the card out, reboot, shut it down and reinstall the card, then reboot again to get the card recognized.

Does this sound like I have a bad card or a bad Mac Pro? This is too reproducible to be random bad luck.
 
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