GGC-H20L SATA drive issues

Beats me. It's a Rosewill SIL 3114, I thought it was supposed to handle optical drives OK. I don't have any others to try on it. It's hard to find cards that specify what the chip is. Suggestions welcome. This card seems to work great otherwise.

Problem is that I've left a hole in my tower and it's really bugging me. Just sits there staring at me. I'm trying to decide whether to put back one of the 6 other IDE burners laying around, or what.

Yeah the dreaded empty 5.25" hole!

I know how you feel in that respect

I have been searching around and continue to do so.

From other posts, Sil 3114 is supposed to be fine with ODD. I assume you have your Sil 3114 flashed with non-raid bios?

Here are other threads just in case
http://club.cdfreaks.com/f43/suugest...r-card-233550/
http://club.cdfreaks.com/f7/silicon-...troller-231715

You probably can try Sil 3512 sata card. But if I were you and really want the H20L, I would just upgrade the mobo with onboard intel sata ports.

Intel is not an "upgrade", IMHO, won't happen anyway.

AFAIK, the SIL 3512 cards are all PCI-X, also not an option. The Rosewill card is supposed to be fine as-is, it remains in non-RAID mode by default. Where would I get a "non-RAID" BIOS?

I ordered a LG H62N to play with, will see how that goes.

Sil 3114 BIOS here: http://www.siliconimage.com/support/...ctid=2&osid=0&

Flash with the b####.bin (Base or IDE bios) to make it non-raid.

Also check this post by LUK where he said he had problems with Sil 3114, very low burst rate, obviously for ODD.

Looks like I might be screwed with this card. I cannot get it to flash BIOS at all, looks like it has the wrong flash chip or something. The base driver won't work with the current BIOS, so that's that. This is probably the reason the LG drive wouldn't work.

The only other chip on the card besides the SIL chip has the name "Holtek" on it, which is not a supported flash chip for the BIOS flashing. It doesn't help that the flashing instructions are written in GEEK.

Tried flashing from REAL DOS??

Found a cheap-assed SYBA card, SIL 3114, with the right memory chip and was able to flash it to the base BIOS, installed base driver. Hooked up the new LG H62N and it's working like a dream.

Off to order another GGC-H20L. Now I have to figure out what to do with an H62N when the H20L gets here. The H62N appears to be a fine burner.

Nice and good luck CDan

You're not going to wait for the GGW-H20L, CDan?

CDan, I had a similar issue with GGC-H20L.

I run Windows Vista Ultimate, however, but just like you, after I first connected the drive Windows would end up showing me BSODs or locking up the computer shortly after the boot was complete.

I tried to disconnect everything but after checking on the Vista Problems and Solution Reports I figured out that the DVD Region+CSS Free executable (DVD43.exe) was the responsible for the mess, since it was conflicting with the system's Kernel!

I unistalled it and now everything is just fine!

So, as many of us might run this application, I thought maybe you're experiencing the same problem.

Hope you solve your problem, as this drive is the least expensive one can get with these specs and have worked really fine for me, so far!

Good luck!

CDan, sorry to hear about your woes with the SIL 3114. I might have been able to help if I had gotten this drive a couple of weeks sooner. I have an intel mobo with both SIL and intel ICH on board. Also, have 2 the syba SIL 3114 sata pci cards installed. Good to hear you got it resolved it must have been very frustrating.

So with this GGC H20L drive should I install it on the ICH or Sil port? or can I install it on the syba Sil card?

Intel definitely. You can't flash the onboard SIL BIOS, you have to add it to the board BIOS, so unless it's already showing as a SATALink, (not SATARAID), then it has the wrong BIOS. The cards will be fine also, again assuming they can be flashed to the correct BIOS. They must have the correct memory chip.

Thanks Dan, will do!

Did anyone find a solution for getting this drive to run properly? I have a GGC-H20L running on XP PRO with an Intel board and built-in SATA with different problems. Some software works, others, specifically DVDFab, doesn't even see BluRay discs. I'm not the only one with that problem either. I just wanted to know if someone found a controller that they got to work flawlessly.

I doubt your problems are related to the SATA controller. BD and HD discs can only be read by software that specifically supports each type. Windows cannot read them without a UDF driver for UDF 2.5.

This is a common problem with DVDFab HD. If you check DVDFab changelogs, the support for HD part has been delayed for some time. And since it is a free version so it is understandable if the author is concentrating on other features (non HD) so you just need to wait until its fully support HD or you can use another software.

I read your other post and you said AnyDVD works? Then use AnyDVD.

Did you install the software bundle that comes with the drive?

Well, some people have had good luck with DVDFab, so I don't think it's a software problem, I'd imagine it has to be my computer, right? I've paid for DVDFab, and I'd like to continue to use it for my HD media as well, and lastly, I like DVDFab over AnyDVD for it's interface, features, and near-weekly updates for new protection schemes.

Once I have the SATA controller tomorrow, and test that route, I'll know if it's software or hardware. In the meantime, can someone give me a better explanation of what the UDF 2.5 controller actually is, in stupid-people terms, and can someone also show me what software bundle I'm supposed to install? It has software, like players and manuals, but I guess I was looking for a driver or software pack installation or something along those lines.

The drive already should come with a CD or DVD with drivers & softwares to install.
UDF 2.50 & 2.60 is necessary because its standard for BD & HDDVD.

what that supposed to mean?

Well I've had good luck with DVDFab HD until a few months ago where it can't recognize any inserted BD or HD disc anymore. All other softwares could, I can see the files inside the discs and copy them with Explorer, I can rip with AnyDVD ripper and also with backupbluray, so I think it's a software problem? I know it's provided free by the author so we will just have to wait I guess.

Let us know how it goes.

You can read the wiki here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format

Basically it's a standard file system for optical media so our system (PC or player) can read the files inside the media properly. If you scroll down to the "Media" in the wiki, you can see that Blu-ray and HD DVD use UDF 2.50 and 2.60. When you burn a video into BD-R/RE you will need to set the burning software to use UDF 2.50/2.60 so your system can recognize it correctly as a blu-ray/hd dvd video. If you burn data to your BD-R/RE discs then you don't need UDF 2.50/2.60, or if you accidentally didn't use UDF 2.50/2.60 then the files in BD-R/RE disc will be recognize as data.

biggest reason why UDF was started because to overcome 1gb max file size in the old file system

Ok, new SATA card made no significant difference.

FYI, PNY PCI SATA card (sil based chipset) with 2 internal and 2 external can only have 2 ports active at the same time settable via jumper packs. The card should not be described as a 4 port card. Regardless, it's going back because it did not fix my problem, but I'm disappointed with them anyway. Plus the 5 second addition to my boot time was not welcome.

Anywho, I installed everything off of the CD from LG, and most of it seemed like software that I already had, lots of CyberLink products that were already included with my copy of Windows XP Black. But now, instead of doing relatively nothing with DVDFab HD, it comes up for a half a second like it normally does when you insert a DVD, but then immediately says insert media on top. So I'm one step closer to... well, okay that didn't really accomplish much but at least my problem is identical to others, so I know it's software based.

AnyDVD HD works, although I hate the software. I guess I'm biased because I've been spoiled by how well DVDFab Platinum does it's job and has been doing so for a while for me. It's one of only 3 pieces of software I've ever purchased in my life.

So whats the next step? I guess we've narrowed the problem down to DVDFabHD, so, is there an update coming sometime soon? I hate to be "that guy," but I paid for the software and I thought that with lifetime updates I wouldn't have to use/buy a second piece of software for HD discs.

Does DVDFabHD work with other drives? What advice can someone give me?

Nekrosoft, you have the drive? What do you use it for and which software do you use? What kind of results are you having with the drive?

I have tested DVDFab HD on three drives, Panasonic SW-5582, LG GBW-H10N and LG GGW-H10N and it doesn't work anymore now. I believe some months ago it worked but not anymore.

What exactly you want to do if DVDFab HD works? If it works, it can only rip the entire movie, it cannot rip only the main movie, and you cannot "shrink" the files as we can do it for DVD. The same goes to AnyDVD HD with its built in ripper. You will need other software if you want to cut the video or audio out from the main movie.

I'm using both software and since DVDFab HD doesn't work now, I sometime use it for DVD only. For Blu-ray/HD DVD I use AnyDVD HD. With AnyDVD HD enabled in the background, you can browse with Explorer and drag any files from the disc. But some suggested that there are problems with dragging files with Explorer and the best solution is AnyDVD ripper to ensure that there's no noise during file transfer form the disc/drive to your harddrive.