Peaceful

Michael, Having just made this same upgrade on my unraid server, I understand feeling like your head is going to explode! I did buy the same card you link to, but mine came from a US seller who shipped quickly and even wrapped the retail box in bubble wrap. That specific controller, the LSI SAS 9207-8i, works out of the box with no special drivers or firmware flash required, and mine has been working flawlessly since it was installed. Highly recommended. Remember to also buy some mini SAS to SATA breakout cables to connect your sata drives to the controller card. I believe I ordered these from Amazon and they worked just fine, other than the cable numbering stickers being incorrect on one set of cables. Others with more experience may chime in here as well. I've no experience with ordering that controller from China. Have fun, Peaceful

Phase 3 of the unraid server rejuvenation project is finally finished and I am happy to report that the LSI 9207-8i from ebay is working perfectly OTB. The card came in a retail box (wrapped in bubble wrap, no less!) complete with documentation, driver cd, and alternate mounting bracket. Very pleased with the product and shipping from this ebay seller. Ended up moving the sata connections for all 8 drives to the LSI card leaving the 6 on-board ports open for future use. I've also replaced all but one of the aging WD Black 1TB drives with HGST Deskstar 4TB drives, increasing data storage from 7TB to 25TB. Considering that the WD balck drives ran non-stop for 6 years without a failure speaks highly of these older drives. Now I have a pile of 1TB drives with nothing to do... Thank you again for everyone's help with rejuvenating my server. Peaceful

Thanks for the tip. I ended up buying an LSI 9207-8i from reputable seller on ebay and according to the Hardware Compatibility guide, it comes in IT mode by default, so no flashing required (fingers crossed). Better price than Amazon and no taxes either. Thanks again to everyone for your help! Peaceful

Thank you for the suggestion! That LSI card looks like a good fit and with PCIe 3.0 it offers an upgrade path should I replace the MB one day. Thanks for the clarification. I was being too literal with the interface designations. The LSI that SoAvenger is using sounds like a good solution. Thanks again, Peaceful

Hello, My unRAID server case (Thermaltake Armour) currently houses 8 drives and can comfortably hold four more in the removable drive cages, for a total of 12 drives. However, all 8 existing sata ports are occupied (6 on the DH55HC MB, plus 2 on a SiiG sata card). To create some open stata ports now and add more drives in the future, I need to replace the SiiG SC-SA0L 11-S1 2-port card that is connected to the PCI express 2.0 x16 graphics card slot with a 6-port or 8-port card that will perform optimally in the same slot . I've read through the PCI Sata Controller section of the Hardware Compatibility Wiki and am not sure which controller I should purchase because the only card listed for PCI express 2.0, is the SuperMicro AOC-USAS2-L8i/L8e, which is discontinued according to the SuperMicro website. Any recommendations for a replacement controller card that is <=$150? Thank you, Peaceful

To close the loop on my initial question, I just ordered four of these HGST DeskStar NAS 3.5" 4TB 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s High-Performance Hard Drive for Desktop NAS Systems Retail Packaging 0S04005 that are on sale at newegg for $140 plus additional promo code discount of $14 for a net cost of $126 ea. Promo ends 1-14-18. Newegg Peaceful

Thank you again, jonathanm, for taking the time to provide a detailed answer, I really appreciate it. I now feel confident to proceed with the drive replacement and file system change, and am researching which drives to buy. The plan was to us the WD blacks again, but the 4TB capacity drives are rather expensive when other acceptable options are available. Cheers, Peaceful

Jonathanm, Thank you very much for detailing the exact file transition process to follow. I do have a question: in steps 2 and 7 only zero errors is ok, so what do I do if there are errors? Peaceful

Thank you for the heads-up on this change, though I'll have to do some reading to understand which file system to change to and why. The unRAID main display reports 1.78TB of free space, so I suppose that means a 1TB drive could be emptied. Peaceful

Thank you both for your quick replies! Sorry for the confusion. Yes, I am replacing drives, not adding new ones. This then is the process to follow as I understand it: 1) Stop the array, remove the old parity drive, install the new 4TB drive, and then start the array and rebuild parity. 2) Once the parity rebuild is complete, stop the array and remove one of the existing data drives, install the new 4TB drive and then start the array again and let it rebuild the data on the new drive. Seems very straight forward. Thank you again. Peaceful

Hello, Summary: Like the title says, I'm not sure how to replace a data drive when there are no open SATA ports for the new drive. Back in 2010 I built my first unRAID server and it has been serving up movies and music without a hitch ever since. late last year, I finally did a version upgrade from 4.x to 6.3.5, which went smoothly despite my considerable butt-puckering fear of losing data. Kudos to the great documentation on the wiki and forums! Here are my system specs: - M/B: Intel - DH55HC - CPU: Intel® Core™ i3 CPU 540 @ 3.07GHz - Memory: 4 GB (max. installable capacity 16 GB) - SATA Ports: 6 - SATA host adapter: SIIG SC-SA0L11-S1 PCI-Express 2.0 Low Profile Ready SATA III (6.0Gb/s) 2-Port Host Adapter - Drives: 3xWD1002FAEX 1TB + 5xWD1001FALS 1TB for 7TB storage and 1TB Parity - All 8 SATA ports are occupied It's time to start replacing drives and this is where there is some confusion on my part: 1) The 1TB parity drive is starting to throw SMART (disc read) errors and I want to upgrade it to a newer 4TB version (will stay with the black drives as they've performed so well over the years). If I understand the wiki, replacing the parity drive is as simple as stopping the array, removing the old parity drive and installing the new one, then starting the array and rebuilding parity. 2) Upgrade one or more of the 1TB data drives with the newer 4TB version to increase storage capacity. How do I do this without any open SATA ports to add a new drive? Hope this isn't a dumb question. Thank you, Peaceful

I've not seen a SATA AGP controller anywhere either. it's probably the proverbial unicorn of controller cards. As you suggest, any investment in PCI controller should probably be limited to a 2 port version. Maybe it's just better to follow the KISS principle and only utilize the on-board SATA ports for now. That would allow me to test with the free basic version (3 disc array + parity disc). Peaceful

Thanks to all of you that replied to my questions so far. This is one of the aspects of this forum that makes it really stand out - people are more than happy to help each other. papnikol: My thought exactly. While I've built numerous PCs and HTPCs, and tried a few Linux variations, running an unRaid server will be a new experience. Better to keep the initial cost low until one has learned to walk, so to speak. Good point. I did check before posting my questions but so far no one had tested my specific board. Good points. I didn't think through the bandwidth issue of having 4 SATAs on one PCI controller. With my PCI 2.0 bandwidth of 133Mb/s it seems like a potential bottleneck for data transfer. And adding more PCI controllers erodes the low-cost value of using the older components. Better to keep the number of discs at 4 and experiment at that level. Peaceful

Hello, I've been reading the forums and recommended system configurations on the Wiki for some time now and am ready to build an unRaid media server. But before spending money on new components for the server I am looking at using the following components from an older PC: Mboard: ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe with 4 SATA 1.0 (150MB/s) ports, AGP video, PCI expansion slots (no PCIe), 800MHz FSB, and Intel Gbit LAN CPU: Pentium 4 3.4Ghz Extreme unlocked (therefore can reduce operating frequency) RAM: 4GB Kingston 400MHz DDR Non-ECC CL3 (2x KVR400X64C3AK2/2G) Video Card: EVGA Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT 256MB (overkill, I know, but its free. May have an old PCI video card in the parts bin for a low power option) HD: use newer existing drives - 2x Caviar Black 1TB WD1002FAEX and 1x Caviar Black 1TB WD1001FALS Power Supply: Antec True Power 480 Case: new Thermaltake Armor VA8000 BWS that has been sitting around for several years - has 11 3.5" bays in front. Additional components to purchase: PROMISE SATA300 TX4 PCI SATA II (3.0Gb/s) 4-Port Adapter for additional SATA ports Three additional WD drives for a total of 7 (6 disk array and one parity drive) Two Cooler Master STB-3T4-E3-GP 4-in-3 Device Module Hardisk Cages (hot swapping is not necessary) Questions: Based on your experience with unRaid do you think the older hardware (Mboard & CPU in particular) will work for the server? Are there any obvious issues? Will it have enough throughput to stream HD and Blu-ray content to two or more HTPCs concurrently? Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions! Regards, Peaceful