Hi --

In preparing for a review I'm writing for a tech site I'm an admin for, I was trying to get the UBCD4Win working.

I'm using a WinXP Pro CD with SP2 included (from MS, not hand-made), BartPE v. 3.13, UBCD4Win version 2.4, and UBCD4Win_Drivers version 02.

The test bed is an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe with an AMD XP3200+, and two Seagate 80GB Barracuda SATA drives in RAID 0 via a Silicon Image Sil3112A SATA/RAID controller. Further system details are in my sig.

The boot CD will not recognize the C: drive (RAID array). I've tried pressing F6 and loading the drivers from the floppy disk provided by Silicon Image with the motherboard; I tried dropping a set of Silicon Image drivers in as a plug-in, no luck on either approach.

When I tried to load the drivers from the floppy via F6, Windows complained that it already had drivers for the Silicon Image, so the drivers included with UBCD4Win_Drivers are loading -- my network ( via the nVidia nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset) is also working, so I'm reasonably certain all included drivers are loading correctly. Neither using the included driver nor telling Windows to go ahead and use the floppy-based ones worked.

The strange thing is that, though I'll have to wait 'till Monday EST to be sure, I'm virtually certain the same "Silicon Image drivers in as a plug-in" setup worked (not as a UBCD4Win, but a plain BartPE disk) with a nearly-identical (same motherboard, same CPU) system that contains just one Seagate 80GB Barracuda SATA drive (so is not in a RAID setup).

Any ideas?

Thanks!

First, I would suggest getting the latest version of the UBCD4Win (V 2.41 FULL) as it solves a serious issue with the build. Second, I would also suggest getting the latest copy of the drivers add-on (V 0.3) as it has many more drivers. Otherwise, I would not know why that is happening. I will double check the drivers to make sure that it includes the SI 3112A, as I know it already has the 3112 (not sure if there's a different driver or what). Also, how exactly did you build the CD? Did you copy your XP CD to the HD first and point pebuilder there? Any other information will be helpful too. Thanks.

EDIT: Nice system by the way, though I don't like to boast/brag, I think I have you beat.

Thanks, LittlBUGer. I will DL the latest versions of both packages and give them a go. I didn't copy the XP disk to the HD, BartPE read it from the optical drive. I saved the build as an .iso file, then burned it to a CD with Nero.

I will try out the disk in work tomorrow; as I said, I think these are the same drivers I used for a straight BartPE build which saw the HD fine -- except it was a single drive, not a RAID array. I'll also try the opposite -- see if the straight BartPE disk can see the array on my home machine.

My system used to be nice, but now is showing its age -- it's time to build a new one...

I think your system is great, it used to be like my "old" one, but I also thought I needed a new one a few months ago, which is when I got this:

Fully custom built and optimized by me...
MSI Neo2 Platinum mobo
Antec TruePower 550W PSU
Athlon FX-53 CPU
ATI Radeon X800 XT vid card
1 GB Corsair Dual Channel RAM
2x WD 74GB Raptor HDs in RAID 0
120GB Maxtor backup HD
SB Audigy 1 sound card
Zalman 5.1 surround sound headphones
NEC 3520A DVD burner
TDK 440N DVD burner
Logitech MX1000 Laser Wireless mouse
Logitech Elite Keyboard
19" Viewsonic A90 monitor
Win XP Pro SP2
etc...



Let me know how it goes.

Very nice system! That's the way I'm going next -- 64-bit.

Well, the UBCD4Win disk that won't work with RAID (C: is unrecognized) does work fine in a single-drive system that is otherwise quite comparable to the system with RAID:

Asus A7N8XE Deluxe mobo
Athlon XP3200+
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120 GB SATA drive
Antec SmartPower 350W PSU
Lite-On CD/RW, Lite-On DVD
Sapphire Radeon 9800 SE 128 Mb
2 x 256 Mushkin (2-2-2)
Win XP Pro (SP2)

Let me DL the latest versions of everything, and burn another disk -- we'll see how it goes...

I did download the latest drivers for the 3112A but didn't see anything different from the ones already included in the project, so I'm not sure what to do there. I will see what else I can find though.

Well, unfortunately, the latest DLs didn't solve the issue. The disk, as before, works fine with a single SATA drive, but will not recognize an array of SATA drives in RAID 0.

This is a puzzling problem, since the drivers obviously work with Windows when WinXP resides on the RAID drive (or else my computer would never boot!), but not when booted from the CD. Yet, the drivers on the CD are being loaded, as evidenced by the boot CD's ability to recognize a single SATA drive run by the same controller...

Maybe the order in which things are being done? Has anyone gotten a SATA RAID array (of any kind) to work?

Ideas welcome!

I've got the same mobo at home, I'll try and test 2.41 with the drivers on my PC, although it's a bit more complicated for me as I've got a highpoint rocket SATA controller installed as well.

Only 2x80gb???? Doesn't give you much storage, you need 2x120gb SATA on Raid 0, 1x120gb SATA on a seperate controller card and a 180gb IDE hdd just in case you run out

I think I'm going to wait until the end of the year before I get a 64bit system, if M$ ever get round to releasing the 64bit version of xp before longhorn get's released.

Thanks, stidyup -- I'd appreciate the help!

Local storage isn't really an issue, though I'll admit going 2 x 80 MB was a little cheap of me... I have six other machines on my home network, including a Linux server with tons of HD space, if I need to pass anything off...

Have you got a powerplant as well for all that lot!!!

Try formatting the two the two seperately, either in a windows envieoment or fdisk in dos. Fat or NTFS. Hook up the two drives, boot, f4 and set your raid to stripped.

This may work for you

Just tested this at home on my PC, it didn't see any of my Raid partitions.

Strangly I did have a raw volume listed????

Yep -- I get C:\<unrecognised> or some such. I don't really want to reformat my drives to suit UBCD4Win, that kind of defeats the purpose of a rescue environment that works with multiple computers, no? And, this was just for a review I'm writing, no actual rescue required at this point...

Besides, the same drivers and the same RAID set up work fine under WinXP Pro when the RAID drive is the boot drive, versus the CD.

I'm going to see how a Knoppix CD deals with it...

Well, like I said, the drivers are included in the drivers add-on. It may just be how BartPE (pebuilder) is handling them. Maybe something isn't recognizing them properly even though they've been added or maybe it's corrupting built-in XP drivers or something, I'm not sure. But I'm not sure what else to do as I've added them exactly as BartPE says to add them and I've double-checked them for errors and found nothing. So, either the new way of how BartPE handles drivers needs to be improved (which I think is a yes), or we need to include certain drivers as plugins and not part of the driver add-on. Hopefully we'll get something figured out, as I'd really like you to give us a good review. The CD really does work and it's very, very nice.

I forgot to bring my CD home for the weekend to try again. If I get time over the weekend I'll download all the necessary files and see what happens.

Just tried the latest driver release and still the raid drive isn't recognized I even deleted the other sil image drivers just in case they may have been conflicting and still nothing.

I agree with you, LittlBUGer -- I don't think this is a UBCD4Win problem, or an issue with the drivers -- my guess is this is a problem stemming from how BartPE handles the drivers.

I haven't had much time to really investigate this thoroughly yet, but next week's looking good...!

HomeBrew
not sure whether you got your SiI3112 RAID working yet? I have an Abit AN7 with RAID 0 array & concocted a working setup for BartPe a few months ago. I've just found UBCD4Win but couldn't get the supplied drivers (v05) to detect my array. Just tried my own out & they do work for me - so if you want to give them a whirl they're here
HTH
Cheesman

Please chessman, and everyone, always PM or post on the forums in the correct location about ANY issues you have with your drivers so that I can add new ones or fix the current ones! It doesn't do any good for you to just help the one person with problems when I can help fix it for everyone! Anyway, have you tried the V 1.0 drivers add-on? I will try adding your drivers as well to see what the issue is. Thanks.

UPDATE: I just compared these with the ones in drivers add-on V1.0 and found that the ones in V1.0 are slightly more updated but otherwise identical. Not sure why there would still be problems. The location of the files I'm comparing in V1.0 is: SCSIAdapter\Silicon_Image\3112_a . Please post back if you do still have problems with V1.0 and I'll add your drivers and maybe release a V1.1. Thanks.

Yes I agree. I really appreciate the fact that cheesman wants to help. However it is also good to look at the big picture. Normal users of the project do not realize it and I don't expect them to. I'm not asking for the users of the project to do our work for us, but it helps if users do a little testing. Remember, we are doing this to help give people a kick ass boot CD and we have spent countless hours over the last year to make it the best possible. If I could test with all these different types of hardware users have I would try my hardest to figure things out. I am pretty much poor so I can't afford every motherboard or card that is manufactured.

When issues arise we would appreciate a little bit of your time. If the driver download provided by us doesn't work for your hardware and you figure out something that does work for you, please do a little troubleshooting to help.

In this situation I ask:
V0.5 didn't work for you, so you created your own. Did you delete the drivers download and only have "your" driver plugin when you built? Or did you just replace the files for that device with your own?

It could be possible that the newer drivers just won't work in the project. It could also be possible that another driver is conflicting with the driver you need.

I am not demanding that users spend a few hours and waste several CD's to help us. I just simply ask for a little bit of your time (if you are willing) to do a little troubleshooting to help others and possibly waste a couple of CD's.


Thanks and welcome to the forum!!

Hi
there are two reasons why I thought it prudent to offer this first in a restricted manner. These are:
- introducing what is obviously a 'near duplicate' of an existing driver plugin could cause confusion & conflict problems to others.
- my configuration will certainly be dissimilar to that of other users & I wanted to see whether my fix would be general or specific before advocating it widely. (see below for enlightenment).

I also think you guys should have moved this thread from General to a Drivers forum long ago if you weren't happy with it here, but I digress....my further findings now show the following.

Installed the whole set - and nothing but the whole set - of v1.0 drivers. My SiI3112A (bios 4.2.27) didn't show up. Removed the Adaptec folder from the SCSIAdapters & , hey presto, there was my RAID.

Why did I remove the Adaptec drivers? Well, I also have an old Adaptec AHA 2940 PCI card in the box at present, running a CDwriter, so I thought I'd remove unwanted Adaptec drivers in case of conflict. Anyway the writer works fine in both the BartPe & UBCD4Win without those fancy Adaptec drivers. So the question now is whether this fix specific to my configuration or is there a general conflict between SiI & Adaptec in your drivers rig?

chill, Cheesman
ps. have removed 'my' SiI3112A plugin from my website

Ahh, very interesting observation. I don't have that kind of hardware to test so I couldn't see this before. I further explored what you said about a conflict between the Adaptec and Silicon Image drivers and found that the following folder: SCSIAdapter\Adaptec\sata_1205sa has basically identical drivers to the ones I mentioned earlier, though OLDer... So, I bet that's where the conflict is, not the entire Adaptec folder, but just that set of drivers in it. If you have time, can you please test this? Just remove the folder I named in this post and see if it works? Thanks!

I doubt I'll get chance today, but I'll burn a new ubcd4win tomorrow and test on my PC, see if the adaptec trick works on my Asus mobo.

stidyup
I later PM'd LittlBUGer to say

hth - Cheesman

Thanks for the info.

I did suspect that it may have been a conflict between raid drivers causing the problem, I'm just glad I didn't have to go through them one by one.

Well, I'm going to leave the actual driver files there but comment them out so they wont get added. So, just in case we need them later, they will be there. Thanks.