Hardware Raid Problem with 10.6.3

[VideoLasVegas]

Not on my Hackintosh but on a standard 8 core 2.8 Mhz early 2008 Mac I’ve found what may be a 10.6.3 problem with my OEM Silicon Image 3124 chipset 4 port Raid Card wired direct connect to a 4 drive external tower with eSata cables. I updated to 10.6.3 on the Hack and on another standard Mac from 10.6.2 with no problems at all. On the machine with the Raid card I updated from Leopard to Snow Leopard and then to 10.6.3 and it updated with all sorts of Kernel Panics: it said the raid was damaged, could read but not write and couldn’t be repaired. I backed up all the files on an external. I repaired permissions several times. Disk utility caused kernel panic crashes some of the time as did my applications in a somewhat random occurence. Finally I was able to delete and rebuild the raid. The System profiler shows the card in the slot under the PCI category but under "Hardware Raid", it doesn’t show anything installed. Even shutting down still sometimes caused a kernel panic. At this point I ejected the raid and turned off the drives to have the system run properly. The system is very shaky with the raid active but runs fine without it. As mentioned earlier the Raid drive partition was deleted and rebuilt in case something was on the drives causing the problems but that didn't fix the problem. Silicon Image doesn't do much for tech support; they rely on the OEM manufacturers using their chipsets so I don't expect much help from them. Has this happened to anyone or does anyone have any ideas how to fix it?

 

[humph]

This may not help (!!)...however...

a) Did you update the SiliconImage drivers?
I know I had all sorts of problems when I went from Leo to SL, until eventually SI did offer some drivers...this was for the 2-port chip, not the 4-port one.

b) On SI support site, seems they have drivers for 10.6.1 for 3124 (so no guarantee about higher, although the ones I used are OK on 10.6.3)...BUT...they are only base drivers not RAID...

http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=27&cat=3&os=3

 

[VideoLasVegas]

The new driver seems to help. I went to the Silicon Image site earlier but didn't find that driver. There are still a few quirks on the systems such as CS4 Premiere not letting me choose the Raid initially on startup as a scratch disk but no kernel panics. Thanks for posting the link. I'll let the forum know of anything else that shows up on this.