Silicon Image SATA mirror and True Image Recovery

During analysis of True Image 8 (using the trial version) I discovered a strange and (I believe) dangereous thing when testing the recovery CD.

My system has a Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro 2 (rev 1). I have used the onboard Silicon Image Si3112 SATA RAID controller to mirror two SATA drives. Within Windows XP SP2 I made 3 partitions on the RAID 1 volume. I loaded True Image 8 and made a test backup of the C: partition.

However, when I boot the recovery CD, True Image does not show me a single raid volume - it shows the two individual drives of the mirror, with the 3 partitions on each of them. In other words, instead of one volume with 3 partions, I see two volumes with a total of 6 partitions!

Has anyone else observed this? I cannot believe it is safe or healthy to restore a partion to a single drive that is hardware mirrored via the main board. In fact, it's a mystery how it sees the two drives as separate volumes in the first place.

I don't want to buy this software if I cannot use the recovery CD method and I cannot see trying to recover partitions this way if the Linux based recovery CD cannot properly handle Silicon Image SATA mirror sets.

Also, I would also like to confirm the rash of posts about sloppy uninstalls - uninstalling this stuff takes it out of obvious sight - but not out of the system. Leaves the snapshot stuff tied to the hard drives, leaves the service entries, etc., etc. So, even if you just demo the software, your stuck with pieces of True Image whether you like it or not. Very, very, amateur stuff in regards to software removal...

Thanks for any thoughts/feedback about the RAID problem.

 

Hello zappaman,

As you can see below, I use the same motherboard as you. Unfortunately I can't help with your RAID 1 question as I run my SiL3112A in Base (non RAID) mode. However, in case you end up wanting/needing to uninstall TI completely, this recent post by Acronis Support provides the necessary <manual uninstall instruction>.

Regards

 

Hello zappaman,

Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

We are really sorry for the inconveniences.

The behavious you described isn't normal. However, the latest (796) build of Acronis True Image should work properly with your controller. Please try the "acpi=off noapic" workaround and if it doesn't help create sysinfo.txt and send to support@acronis.com along with the link to this thread (please see https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=55317 for the detailed instructions).

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

I'm also thinking of buying Acronis and have been put off by the fact that it doesn't seem to support the Silicon Image Si3112 on my motherboard (MSI K8N Neo 4 Platinum). When I booted from the recovery CD and selected restore disk image, it just hung as soon as I clicked the button with a "preparing.." something message.

Can you confirm that Acronis supports the Si3112 in all RAID configurations (I had a RAID 5 array at the time). If so, why doesn't it prompt for the drivers disk like Norton Ghost does? Surely it needs this to be able to access the RAID array?

Nick...

 

ti8 worked on a sil3112 in raid 0 and a sil3114 in raid 0, i could not get it to work with both sils in satalink (normal sata single drive) mode, probably due to missing bios for the sil cards ie. motherboard implementation

 

I have an ASUS P5AD2 with a SATA Silicon Image Sil3114R controller configured in RAID 10.

I indeed found out as you did that the Linux driver on the boot CD did not recognize the RAID. if you do a bare metal restore with True Image 8 on your raid you crash your raid as TI just recovers the data to one single disk as if it was a JBOD. So backups and exploring the .tib file under windows works fine but NO WAY to restore using the boot CD.

TI support does not seem to be able to help us with that (it's a driver problem). I just got a laconic your hardware is not supported .....

 

Hello AndreG,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Acronis program has to support your controller configured in RAID 10. Please create sysinfo.txt file as described at https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=55317 and send to support@acronis.com along with the link to this thread and indicate in the subject of the letter that it should be given to Marian Fadeeva.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Irina,

thanks for your answer but included a mail I just got from Marian Fadeeva about this matter.

If you could help we'd all appreciate it for sure but meanwhile ....


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello Andre,

We regret to inform you that RAID 10 on your controller is still unsupported because of the lack of open source driver .

--
Best regards,
Marian Fadeeva

Acronis, Inc.
395 Oyster Point Blvd.
Suite 213 South San Francisco
CA 94080 USA

 

Hello Andreg,

Please accept my apologies for your inconvenience. We will support your controller in the future versions.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Irina,

we are now 2 moth later is there any news ??

 

I have sucesfully imaged and restored with version TI 8 build 859 on my MSI K8Neo2 from a raid setup to normal single drive setup as the raid just isn't worth using and causes more problems than any speed benefits you should get with a raid 1 setup.

So if you haven't tested build 859 or 889 try it out and it will most likely work fine for your raid controller.

 

Hello Andreg,

We are sorry for the delayed response.

We don't support RAID 10 on your controller, we will support it in the future, please accept our apologies for your inconvenience.

Thank you
--
Irina Shirokova