Hard disk corruption on NF7-S 2.0

I've corrupted my hard drive on my nf7-s with a 230fsb and running my drive off the S-ata controller. Real REAL bad (as in cant get into windows bad) corruption. Dont know if it's a problem with the s-ata, the s-ata at high FSB, or the S-ata adapter.


WD800JB on Sata using the included cable and adapter. I'm just fine at 230fsb on the IDE controller though.

Its a known issue with SATA and the NForce2 chipset. They are working on it, I'm sure they will never figure it out. You will have to go EIDE.

sata issue is fixed

a new bios for sil3112A is available for download at sil's webpage and the 28 drivers may be used

whoever was using the new interim drivers may rollback to version 28 after upgrading the controller's bios

i see it and i read it but do i believe it? i dunno

i guess its a bios flash that just does the controller.i swear right now if it screws my bios or drives by flashing it SI will pay dearly.

btw nvidia nor abit have no info on any of this anywhere ive seen.

drago kudos for the info and staying on top of this.its been a great help to me.and others im sure who want to see this crap work TY!


"edit" well i did the flash. everything is fine but performance sux still.
also the flash is gonna be hard for people not used to doing manual bios flashing and running dos programs.with some patience and some gutz youll be ok tho.its not a mobo bios flash so dont fear it wont wipe the whole machine out,just parts of it lol

also SI doesnt mention using the old original drivers.i want to as they give large performance gains.if they so called "fixed" the problem with the bios flash for the controller the older drivers should be fine.im going back to them myself.

btw 2 days until raptors x2 mabey get ordered looking promising now.

"edit2" lol dont want a high post count so ill just keep editing
seems the old drivers dont get the performance anymore either.
so i guess them slowing the performance down it fixes it.anyhow im about a tad over par with ide raid0. no biggy but a big loss over the original setup.im back to the latest drivers and trying my best to make this thing corrupt.

here's what they have to say about it:

SiI3112A: nForce RAID 0 Data Corruption
This issue has been fixed through a system BIOS revision from nVidia for their nForce corelogic chipset. The new BIOS and flash utility for the nVidia motherboard can be downloaded from the link on the right. There were no revisions made to the drivers for the SiI3112A so you may use the latest version posted on this website. Please check the Related Articles link on the lower right.

Click to expand...

The driver on their page is version 28.

Well actually they didn't say a word about performance with this new bios. Since they had slowed down things with driver version .281 (or .29?) and told everyone to keep with 28 after upgrading the bios, I thought they had fixed it up, including the performance problem.

deathstar, weren't you having great scores with driver version 28? What are your scores now?

Maybe we should wait until abit releases a new bios revision that includes the new bios version for the sata controller.

PS: I really hope my nf7-s to be here by friday so I can start playing with this

heres what i had.
old bios and old driver 56000-58000 in sandra marks
old bios and new driver 46000
new bios old driver 42000
new bios new driver 43000

the newest driver is still 28. i used the old drivers off the abit disks was 17 i think.

they only made this alot slower each time they changed stuff.
i cant complain as it was a suprise on how fast the original setup was,and that was a bonus and really made me want to see how fast the raptors would do with that setup also.

now i have a thoery i discussed with someone and i might test it later with the raptors.the reason we came up with and SI seems to confirm this with the performance hits was that the sata controller allowed alot more bandwith with the ide drives and they just went nutz running flat out like that.

but if i flash the old bios back and use old drivers and use the 2 raptors in raid0 and it doesnt corrupt my theory is correct.ill see and im almost sure ill order them friday,and ill test that theory since it would be a major improvement in performance like that.even over what those 2 drives will increase it alone.

I thought that the BIOS that you can download from SI is only to be used on add-on cards and not on-boards chips like the way it's done on the NF7-S?
from what I understand you must wait unitill abit brings out a BIOS release which has the new SI BIOS incorporated.

Or am I wrong here???

I'm not sure, but I guess there's no problem in flashing the sata controller yourself using the bios provided by sil.

Anyway it's a big performance hit and it kinda annoys me see how much performance could be get and see it all gone. It's a 25% loss on that, way too much.

About the raptors, I am not sure but I think I saw a thread at amdmb, a guy had corruption with 2 raptors, before this new bios was released.

According to what i have read, us poor Asus users cant flash that bios file. Apparently, we have to wait until it can be incorporated into a version of the Uber bios or whenever Asus decides to update their bios for the board.

On the bright side, I have had SATA raid running on my board now with no corruption since I last set it up. Both HDTach and Atto are showing scores between 50,000 and 60,000 kbs.

I am pleased so far and unless the corruption problem comes back I am hesitant to fix something that isn't broke (crossing my fingers)

If it keeps going ok, I will probably try it with a pair of raptors. I saw the benchmarks posted by one guy on another forum and his scores were through the roof.

Al

Heres an interesting theory.

http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14666


Someone is considering that there may be a problem with the SATA Raid if a hard drive is also connected to the primary IDE channel.

Now thats weird, When I was having problems before, I did have an 80 gig Maxtor on the primary IDE port with my backup files on it. Right now there is nothing on the port but a dvd rom drive.

Coincidence? I am afraid to stick the 80 gig drive back on now in case this is an issue

Al

ive not run ide drives and sata drives on the cotroller at the same time.
i sold my backup nf7-s rev1.2 and its serillel adaptor so i will be back on ide single drive a week until my raptors show up.yes im buying them order em tonight.

i had no issues flashing the new controller bios.i dont see why asus mobos would be differant but who knows.

The corruption issue turned out to be a NVDIA bios problem. SI has issued a new bios for it and there are very specific instructions to follow so as not to F it up. You can read it here.




http://www.amdforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=221283&pagenumber=2

SI site

http://www.siimage.com/search/index.asp

Any asus A7n8x users out there who need the Sil controller fix?

The link for the complete bios update for revision 1 & 2 boards is located in this thread:http://www.amdforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=221721

Now i am going to try it

Al