Coaster Coaster Coaster...Spent $1000+ going broke

[rcubed]

A New Guy,

Did you check on the Plextor website and see if the SATA chip set is listed as compatible with the Plextor SATA drive. I had a really difficult time with my 716SA and and Asus A7N8X Deluxe. It used the Nforce 2 chip set. The drive would be flaky on verifies. The burns appeared to be ok. This was before I was doing DLs. I finally got it to work with a PCI card from Promise SATA II 150 TX4 (it's been discontinued). Have you tried verifying the DVD with a different drive after it was written by the Plextor to see if it is just a verify problem. However it was still slot sensitive in the mobo back panel. Also I had to use the latest drivers from Promise. The SATA optical drives can be really picky.

 

I have since updated to an Asus A8N-SLI Premium and that is working for both my 716SAs with no problems. I have them on the Silicon Image 3114 controller. I can understand the cost issues. I went through two different SATA PCI cards before I got one that worked. I could never get the Adaptec PCI controller to work, even though is was one of the ones listed on the Plextor site. When I contacted Adaptec they commented the card wasn't certified for use with optical drives.

 

Keep us posted,

 

Good luck,

 

Cuber

[A New Guy]

Did you check on the Plextor website and see if the SATA chip set is listed as compatible with the Plextor SATA drive. I had a really difficult time with my 716SA and and Asus A7N8X Deluxe. It used the Nforce 2 chip set. The drive would be flaky on verifies. The burns appeared to be ok. ...The SATA optical drives can be really picky.

I checked the Plextor website and no boards from DFI appear to have been tested. But my previous motherboard (K8N Neo2 Platinum) was compatible with both my 716SA and 755SA drives. Maybe I should buy a 4th DVD burner (IDE)?

 

I have since updated to an Asus A8N-SLI Premium and that is working for both my 716SAs with no problems. I have them on the Silicon Image 3114 controller.

The DFI UT Lanpart DR-Expert SLI has a Silicon Image 3114 controller but it only appears to work in a RAID configuration.

 

Have you tried verifying the DVD with a different drive after it was written by the Plextor to see if it is just a verify problem.

How can I verifying the DVD with a different drive? What software would I use? Or do you mean simply watching it?

 

Thanks Cuber....

Edited February 18, 2007 by A New Guy

[dirio49]

Have you tried verifying the DVD with a different drive after it was written by the Plextor to see if it is just a verify problem.

How can I verifying the DVD with a different drive? What software would I use? Or do you mean simply watching it?

 

Thanks Cuber....

 

you can just use imgburn to verify, in the verify mode, you can either check agianst and image or just make sure that the whole dvd is readable

[A New Guy]

you can just use imgburn to verify, in the verify mode, you can either check agianst and image or just make sure that the whole dvd is readable

Thanks. What a great feature.

 

Have you tried verifying the DVD with a different drive after it was written by the Plextor to see if it is just a verify problem.

This disc that fails to verify on the new Plextor 755SA and my old 716SA. However it does verify successfully on my Benq 1640. Is my DFI LANPARTY UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert nForce 4 SATA not compatible with SATA drives or are both my SATA drives now broken?

Edited February 18, 2007 by A New Guy

[rcubed]

A New Guy,

I downloaded the manual for your mobo. It looks like your mobo has two sets of SATA connectors one for the NVIDIA controller and one for the SIL 3114.

 

Where do you have the Plextors plugged in on your mobo. I would recommend the SIL 3114 SATA slots 5,6,7, or 8. Slots 1-4 are the NVIDIA SATA. I don't remember whether or not I tried mine on the NVIDIA SATA controller. I have the HDs plugged into the NVIDIA, so I put the Plextors on the SIL3114 to avoid contention in the controller with the HDs also I may have tried them on the NVIDIA and had problems. I don't have any RAID sets configured for the SIL3114. The 716SAs are just regular drives on the controller. Mine are plugged in slots 5 and 7 (they show up as logical devices 0 and 2) any slot should work. To my knowledge I never loaded the RAID software for the 3114s. I don't know how your mobo boots up, but I get a SIL31114 message along with an option of F4 to configure the RAID. This may be doing the same thing the software you can load under XP to manage the RAID configuration.

 

I am also running XP Pro SP2. My Silicon Image 3114 shows up under SCSI and RAID Controller in Device Manager as Silicon Image SiI 3114 SoftRaid 5 Controller. The driver level I am running is 1.5.10.0. It's available out on the Silicon Image web site. I may have had to update the 3114 drivers from the original ones that came with the ASUS disk. Microsoft has had two driver updates for hardware on their site. Like I said I'm running 1.5.10.0 currently.

 

I'm hoping you have them on the NVIDIA controller and that is the problem. Moving them to the 3114 should fix your problems (I hope). If the 3114 controller is configured as a RAID set that may also be causing problems. I would think deleting any raid sets would fix that and allow your Plextors to be regular drives.

 

The link to SIL for the 1.5.10.0 driver is http://www.siliconimage.com/support/suppor...amp;osid=4&

 

Let us know how you are configured and make out.

 

Cuber

[A New Guy]

A New Guy

I downloaded the manual for your mobo. It looks like your mobo has two sets of SATA connectors one for the NVIDIA controller and one for the SIL 3114.

 

Where do you have the Plextors plugged in on your mobo. I would recommend the SIL 3114 SATA slots 5,6,7, or 8. Slots 1-4 are the NVIDIA SATA. I don't remember whether or not I tried mine on the NVIDIA SATA controller. I have the HDs plugged into the NVIDIA, so I put the Plextors on the SIL3114 to avoid contention in the controller with the HDs also I may have tried them on the NVIDIA and had problems. I don't have any RAID sets configured for the SIL3114. The 716SAs are just regular drives on the controller. Mine are plugged in slots 5 and 7 (they show up as logical devices 0 and 2) any slot should work. To my knowledge I never loaded the RAID software for the 3114s. I don't know how your mobo boots up, but I get a SIL31114 message along with an option of F4 to configure the RAID. This may be doing the same thing the software you can load under XP to manage the RAID configuration.

 

I am also running XP Pro SP2. My Silicon Image 3114 shows up under SCSI and RAID Controller in Device Manager as Silicon Image SiI 3114 SoftRaid 5 Controller. The driver level I am running is 1.5.10.0. It's available out on the Silicon Image web site. I may have had to update the 3114 drivers from the original ones that came with the ASUS disk. Microsoft has had two driver updates for hardware on their site. Like I said I'm running 1.5.10.0 currently.

I am unclear on what the Microsoft updates are about. I have searched Microsoft Knowledge Base for Windows XP. I cannot seem to find anything for Serial ATA, SATA, Si 3114, or nforce4. I was able to get the SiI 3114 version 1.5.10 on the link you provided. thanks

 

I'm hoping you have them on the NVIDIA controller and that is the problem. Moving them to the 3114 should fix your problems (I hope). If the 3114 controller is configured as a RAID set that may also be causing problems. I would think deleting any raid sets would fix that and allow your Plextors to be regular drives.

 

The link to SIL for the 1.5.10.0 driver is http://www.siliconimage.com/support/suppor...amp;osid=4&

 

Let us know how you are configured and make out.

 

Cuber

Thanks Cubed. It sounds like you went through something simular to what I am experiencing. What firmware level your Sil 3114 controller have? You can get that on boot up.

 

42. Changed BIOS setting to Sil3114 SATA Raid Control: SATA RAID 0,1,0+1,5. Moved 716SA and 755SA to Sil 3114 SATARaid BIOS 5.2.16. Installed Silicon Image SiI 3114 SoftRaid 5 Controller 1.5.10.0 driver. Both drives are unable to verify the DVD succussfully.

 

43. Changed BIOS setting to Sil3114 SATA Raid Control: SATA. Moved 716SA and 755SA to Sil 3114 SATALink BIOS 5.2.16. Its an older version but I am at the latest motherboard firmware. I do not believe there is anyway to upgrade it further. Installed Silicon Image SiI 3114 SATALink Controller 1.3.10.0 driver. Both drives were unable to verify the DVD succussfully.

 

Since I upgraded my motherboard firmware I thought I should repeat some earlier tests.

 

44. Moved 716SA and 755SA to NVIDIA nForce4 Serial ATA Controller 5.10.2600.666. Both my drives were unable to verify the DVD succussfully.

 

45. With the Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller 5.1.2600.2180, my Benq 1640 is able to verify the DVD sucessfully.

 

All three drives have now developed a new annoying warning message from imgburn: "DeviceIoControl(IOCTL_STORAGE_MCN_CONTROL) Failed! - Media change notification has NOT been disabled." I read a post http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=569&st=20http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=569&st=20 from LUK saying that the Sil 3114 controller causes it.

Edited February 18, 2007 by A New Guy

[rcubed]

A New Guy,

My bios for the 3114 shows 5.1.39. It's the one that came with the mobo. I tried the driver approach 1st rather than mess with the bios. Plus I could never figure out how to update the bios for the 3114 (no guts). I suspected it was contained in the mobo bios, but was never sure. Asus doesn't offer any info on updating it. Did you do it through the Silicon Logic interface in XP?

 

The Microsoft driver updates are under windows updates, custom. I have normally stayed away from the driver updates from Microsoft and usually get them from the vendors. Microsoft doesn't supply very much detail on what the driver update is for or what it does. I think I made sure I had a backup of my existing drivers before I tried the MS ones. Although it might help.

 

Boy! I don't know what to suggest next other than contact the mobo and/or Silicon lLgic people, or the mob forums if they have one. I don't think your drives are broken. Just as a test at least for the 716SA you could put the jumper on the drive and force PIO mode to check. That mode is useless for normal function it's waaaaaayyyyyy toooo slow.

 

I don't have the message you are getting. I think it was showing up in the LUK ripping program and I think unticking (no check mark) the Disable Media Change Notification under the Device tab fixed it. It just started occurring when doing rips using RipIt4Me. That box is not ticked (in my configuration) with ImgBurn. LUK might be able to shed some light on what that box actually does.

 

I don't know about your mobo bios settings, but I would think the 3114 SATA not the RAID option would be the proper setting. Just out of curiosity what does device manager say for the details on the drives. Mine shows them connected as Ultra DMA 4.

 

I don't know if I would recommend putting a PCI SATA adapter card into your mobo at this point, might just be more money down the drain. As I said I had a devil of a time getting one that would work in my A7N8X-Deluxe. Normally the 3114 chip set seems to work in most applications.

 

I don't know if any of the other forum readers could suggest other sites that may address this problem.

 

You have my sympathy. This problem just about drove me nuts. I may have had similar problems when I 1st put the A8N-SLI mobo in my case and started bringing it up. What I have mentioned are the steps as I remember them that I used to get it going. I probably have blanked the bad experience out of my mind. I went with SATA drives because I had all the other IDE ports tied up with either HDs or CD burners.

 

When I was having the problem it would show up as errors when ripping and or verifying. I did some byte by byte comparisons on the data that should have been in the file and the actual data read back and bytes were sometimes out of order within a 32 bit word. I could never figure out what was causing it. Probably some timing problem somewhere. I think Adaptec blew me off with the comment that the SATA adapter wasn't designed for optical drives when I contacted tech support.

 

Sorry I've run out of ideas/suggestions, again anyone else have any?

 

Cuber

 

P.S. As an after thought. You might try uninstalling the controller and let XP do the reinstall.

Edited February 18, 2007 by rcubed

[Aten]

Amz. $1000+ and nearly broke. Has any1 ever read Moby dick. Having deja vu. I really feel for New guy. Cant beleive that its come to this. Sounds like things are being overcomplicated. Dont hav anything technical to add other then stick to the single layers and avoid DL media if u can. My PC specs are humble by comparison. Only spent ?450 but it gets the job done. Yet to conqer the DL disks myself but thats only because i didnt buy mkm branded in the first place.

 

Good luck NG. Curious to find out if u ever do vanquish that white whale

[rcubed]

A New Guy,

Could you send me a PM and let me know if you made any progress with your SATA problem.

 

Thanks,

 

rcubed

[A New Guy]

I was starting to wonder if there was a strange magnetic field (Bermuda Triangle) encircling my home. Would I have to move to be able to burn a DVD?

 

Maybe there is a problem with the electricity? Was I going to have to generate my own?

 

A New Guy,

Could you send me a PM and let me know if you made any progress with your SATA problem.

 

Thanks,

 

rcubed

I was losing it and took a break. Sorry, rcubed.

 

46. Removed IDE RAID drives to make room to install the (gulp) fourth different DVD drive (Plextor PX-750A)

47. Tested 8x +DL with 100 per cent success rate. Halleluiah!

 

I took an even longer break...

 

48. Returned the Plextor PX-755SA for warranty replacement and received a replacement in 5 weeks.

49. Reinstalled IDE RAID drives and the new replacement Plextor PX-755SA

50. Tested 6x +DL with 100 per cent success rate.

 

Operation Successfully Completed

 

A happy ending and one to tell the grand children. Thanks for all the suggestions everyone...

Edited September 6, 2007 by A New Guy

[lfcrule1972]

Well done on having the patience and the $ to stick with it !!