dropzone7

Okay, more dumb questions. The card you link to above says it has (2) connectors, each with (4) lanes for a total of (8) lanes per card. I'm assuming that means each one of these cards would support (8) drives. The motherboards I have been looking at seem to have 5 or 6 SATA ports on them so if I use all the ones on the motherboard and then (2) of these cards I am set for 20+ drives right?

I appreciate all the help. I got to tell you, this is starting to feel like work. Probably because I know nothing about this stuff. So, I had (2) of these in the machine https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rc-218-sata-ii/p/N82E16816132018 and (1) of these https://www.newegg.com/syba-sy-sa3114-4r-sata-i/p/N82E16816124024 I take it that the throughput of these cards is lower than ideal. Looking at one of the LSI cards you recommended below, it would be 12Gps instead of the 3Gps I currently have. https://www.newegg.com/lsi-9300-8i-sata-sas/p/N82E16816118217 Also found these specs on my case so I guess 6Gps is what I need to look for in cards. 4U rackmount design 20 x hot-swappable SATA/SAS 6G drive bays, two 2.5″ OS drive brackets Five internal SFF-8087 Mini SAS connectors support up to twenty 3.5″ or 2.5″ SATA (I, II or III) or SAS 6G hard drives Backplanes are horizontal mounted for better ventilation LED indicators for power and activity on each HDD tray 1 x slim CD-ROM bay, 20 x 3.5 ” hot-swappable drive bays, 2 x 2.5″ OS drive brackets Support EEB (12″x13″), CEB(12″x10.5″), ATX (12″x9.6″), Micro ATX (9.6″ x 9.6″), Mini ITX (6.7″ x 6.7″) motherboard

Okay, I have (20) drive bays looking at the front of the machine. I removed the fan bracket to get a better look at the backplane. It appears there is an open port on that bottom board so with only (4) cables currently plugged in as seen in the photos I guess I can only support up to (16) drives. So, I need to add another cable down there and then I need whatever SATA card(s) will accept the 5 x 4 breakout connections on the other end of those cables.

So, there are 4 sets of these red cables. The end with the single connector goes into the back planes so I have four back planes. The other end is split into 4 smaller connectors per cable. Labeled P0, P1, P2, P3. I believe those were plugged into my smaller cards and maybe some of the directly into the motherboard. I can't find a model number on the case but I'm fairly certain it is a Norco RPC4220 https://www.newegg.com/norco-rpc-4220/p/N82E16811219033

Of course, when I start searching for motherboards, every affordable and recommended model is either sold out or price inflated due to lack of availability.

Funny you mention the fans. Those were the only things I did change upon acquiring this machine from it's original owner. It sounded like a jet engine and fans seemed to be cheap so I replaced the ones on the middle fan chassis. Made a big difference but it was still far from silent. I would probably look for something better now that some years have passed. I just started taking more parts out this afternoon and this thing is filthy! I hate to not use this case as they are expensive like you said and to replace it with something similar is going to be $500 plus. If I'm not mistaken, at this point I will have pulled all of the original components from the machine except for the hard drive backplanes. Is there any reason to believe that these will be a bottleneck when replacing everything else with more modern components?

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond and for the great detail, very helpful! Looks like my power supply is 20-pin with the 4-pin side attachment. That USB drive did come off the motherboard and I just made a backup to a PC per your suggestion. It says I'm on version 4.4.2. So, I can continue to use this licence and update to a current version without purchasing a new license? Now that I look at this machine some more, I wonder if I should just totally start over. I don't really need (20) drives and this thing is a beast. I would not mind have a slightly smaller form factor, using fewer drives but larger capacity. I'm currently using 2TB drives and I believe there are maybe (6) in there. I'm thinking maybe I could get away with an (8) drive system using one for parity drive and use 4 or 6TB drives. I want to rack mount whatever I end up with which is what I did before. I don't necessarily have to have the hot swap drive trays either. I'm confused about the SATA connections though. Does a connection support more than one drive? This machine can hold (20) drives but I only have two or three cards? Oh, to answer your question about what I want to do with the machine and looking 5 years out, if it can effortlessly serve my movie backups then that's all I'm really after. I'm not really a gamer but when I do it's with an XBOX OneX and possibly new generation console when those come out. I would really like to play the new Microsoft Flight Sim which is supposed to be supported by XBOX at some point. Budget for an Unraid server, I'm flexible and don't mind spending some money if it's going to prevent having to replace things in a few years. This will ultimately go in a rack in a home theater room so I want it to look nice and blend in with my amps and other components.

Well, no turning back now. I have no idea what I'm doing. Anyone have a shopping list for me?

Ah, rookie mistake, thanks!

I swear I have looked everywhere and I don't see a signature area for you. Where am I missing it?

Thanks for your reply and the suggestions. I believe there are 22 or 24 hard drive slots in this machine and I think I have (8) 2TB drives in it. To be honest, I'm not really interested in doing anything other than storing my movies and streaming them with devices like my Nvidia Shield, Firestick and maybe a higher end 4K BluRay player with streaming capabilities (not sure what's available these days, it's been a while). I have enjoyed the simplicity of unraid and knowing that it just works and is not complicated. Out of curiousity what else would one do with an unraid server? Am I missing out on something? Any suggestions on shopping list for motherboard, processor, RAM?

Looking for advice on a older machine I have. I bought this about 8 years ago and it served me well for most of that time. Last year I moved and it's been a year or more since I turned on or used this machine. I was the second owner and it was pretty much ready to go when I bought it with the exception of hard drives. I'm thinking it is a bit long in the tooth now and wondering if it is worth trying to replace some hardware in this machine or am I better off starting over. I don't know much about computers so I took some photos, hopefully they mean something to those with more knowledge of the components. I can see that there are (2) sticks of 2Gig RAM which doesn't seem like much these days. The motherboard is SuperMicro but not sure of model. I pulled the fan off of the processor to see information on it. https://drive.google.com/file/d/13vhdYELNddOwZMJNzPrbkfGYApba6RtY/view?usp=sharing, https://drive.google.com/file/d/140dkdLzjvLsH39okKGal7ePgThr0FXpZ/view?usp=sharing, https://drive.google.com/file/d/145-ceuX0eEQ_9I09fZvzmNF6CZ0aDCdP/view?usp=sharing, https://drive.google.com/file/d/145P7gYNRyRUkjwoZy1h3FrOJjDTfK86B/view?usp=sharing, https://drive.google.com/file/d/148lgfeddHofOZcbHhL6IaABWPVrNsHqk/view?usp=sharing, https://drive.google.com/file/d/14HafmhdsVTO0d8Anmrn9jmZZPVgL97Ih/view?usp=sharing, https://drive.google.com/file/d/14Ic3vBukMQTkA6pX-rwJlaLTL2AnU7Lf/view?usp=sharing

I have just started using unRAID and am in the process of migrating data from a WHS to the unRAID by copying files onto a 3TB external drive and then placing the formatted internal drives into the new server one at a time. I then copy the files from the external to the new server. This has worked fine for the most part so far. However, now I am getting a message saying something like "this file cannot be copied to the new locatioin with it's properties, would you like to copy anyway?" I'm not getting it on every file but it just started happening yesterday. If I say yes and copy anyway the process continues. I had one file that showed copied to the server with same size as original and when I went to play it on my Dune media player it said it could not generate a playlist and the usual disc icon associated with ISO files was not there. Any suggestions?