TI8 enterprise and SATA drives

I've read much on this forum about imaging SATA drives, but I have not yet found a solution to my problem.

I have an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. The SATA controller is Silicone Image 3112A. I have no raid running. Unlike the Abit boards with the same chipset, I do not have a setting for the P2P discard time in the BIOS. I know that changing this on the Abit boards solves the problem that I have, but Asus has no such setting. I have the most recent Asus BIOS.

When I image a partition on one drive to a partition on the other drive, it is always corrupt. It doesn't matter if I boot from the CD or the hard drive.

When I image a partition on one drive to a partition on the same drive, the image is always fine.

If, after getting a good image, I move the image to the other drive, it is identified as corrupt by the image checker. However, if I move the good image to a PATA drive across my network, it is fine.

I have been going back and forth with tech support on this for quite a while. I've sent them the log text, and Belarc files. They blame my ram, my cables, my drives. I've checked the ram; I've changed the cables, and my drives test fine with all the diagnostics I can find.

Has anyone on the forum with this setup managed to get good images across drives?

Grant

 

Yes, I have a machine with that exact setup. It works perfectly and has with various versions of TI for about 6 months. Scheduled backup every day and many restores as it's an experimental machine. The two sata drives are WD 80 gigs. My guess would be that your SI controller is bad. Search for MD5 checksum on this board, and then try copying large files and checking the MD5. You can rule out TI and rule in your controller that way.

 

Thanks much. I downloaded an MD5 checksum utility, and it found that, for files over 2Gb, the checksum is different for a copy of a file copied between drives, but it is the same for copies between partitions of the same drive.

All I need to do now if figure out what is causing it.

grant

 

Well, if you determine that it's your controller, you can buy an add-on replacement cheaply here:

SI3112

Don't forget to disable the onboard one, it's a jumper on the motherboard.