CDsDontBurn

I recently acquired a DS-540 from my work last week along with a HB-4618S (SiL3124 based) to accompany it instead of the 1x PCIe controller listed on NewEgg as I do not have any PCIe slots in my computer.

Well anyways, I get home to install the card and everything goes great. I boot up my computer to install the driver and I get the Vista driver from the SiliconImage website and I have to get the one dated Dec. 26, 2006 as the one for Jan. 21, 2007 is actually for Vista 64bit and not 32bit as it is described to be.

Once I get the driver installed, I look in my device manager to look at the hard drives installed in the DS-540 start popping up. They don't show up. I check Disk Management to see if they - the hard drives - show up in there, or at least the JMicron controller of the DS-540 would show up. It doesn't. I look in the RAID Manager software of the DS-540 to see if by any chance the hard drives are listed in there. Again, they're not.

After the hard drives were not being detected in all of these locations, a memory triggered in my head where I thought I remembered that some SiliconImage controllers are not compatible with each other. Like for example, if there was more than one SiliconImage based controller installed in a computer, one of of the controllers would work. I Googled around for this answer but nothing came up. The only things I was able to find was basically hits for driver download of anything from SiliconImage.

The DS-540 is known working. I tested it at work from my RMA (that's how I was approved to get one) batch and the same was true for the HB-4618S. The HB-4618S I know has issues running in RAID mode, particularly RAID 5, but I'm not using the card in RAID as the backplane of the DS-540 has built-in RAID support. The card is running in non-RAID mode because of this.

This is where you guys come in and tell me your thoughts. Do you guys think I have a bad controller card or do you guys think that there are compatibility issues between the two controllers?

The second controller is from my motherboard. Specs to the left.

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Lowfat

What port multiplier does the DS-540 use?

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CDsDontBurn

It uses 1 x JMB393 port multiplier. This port multiplier is built into the backplane directly and is in no way used by the controller card.

Before I got the HB-4618S (SiL3124) card, I had the DS-540 hooked up directly to my last internal SATA port via the provided SATA to eSATA cable. For the three days or so I had the DS-540 hooked up like that, it was working great. The only reason why I added the HB-4618S card is because my onboard SATA doesn't have port multiplying support. I need PM support in order to use the HDDs individually.

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CDsDontBurn

bump?

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