ABS

I am moving to a my Unraid server from tower case with 8 SATA HDDs to a 4U 24 HDDs rack-mounted case with 12G Mini HD Backplane. I was looking for a simple, efficient, and inexpensive solution. What I have seen so far: 1. 24-port SAS HBA (Very expensive) 2. SAS Expanders (could be slow) 3. Combo: 8-port SAS HBA+SAS expander (Seems reasonable) On the existing motherboard, I have 2 unused PCI Express 3.0 standard. Server is used mainly as file server and Plex. No VMs so far. Motherboard: Gigabyte C246-WU4 CPU: i7-9700

Hi, I have been looking for new setup for my UNRAID server. My existing build is limited and increasing the total storage capacity while retaining the same hardware configuration would be very expensive; that is to replace the existing HDDs with larger ones. I was looking for a two unit configuration: 2X 4U cases. 1. 4U for the motherboard, CPU, GPU, HBA's. 2. 4U for HDDs only. The issues I am having: 1. I can not find a short-depth case/bracket to hold all HDDs that can be rack mounted. (Similar to backplane HDD cage) 2. How to connect the (No. 1) CPU 4U to (No. 2) HDDs 4U. 3. which HBAs to use to keep SATA HDDs while connecting all the drives. My existing build: Case: Fractal Design Define R5 Motherboard: Gigabyte W480M VISION W (8 SATA HDDs) Drives: 8x Western Digital 8TB Red Plus Total Capacity: 56TB. I am running low on storage and I see that 10TB Western Digital Red Plus price now is cheaper than the 8TB when I bought them a year ago.