Malcolm

Just a follow up to my original post of 11 December....concerning the use of the eSATA connection at the back of the server to allow me to add a 6th disk - where I'm having problems in getting it to work. I've tried 2 eSATA to SATA cables from the same vendor but had no luck for a variety of different connection options (see below). a. eSATA to SATA in N36L using an internal hard disk. b. eSATA to SATA in my desktop machine – using the same hard disk as in a above. The motherboard is an asrock H67M-ITX. c. eSATA from a WD external disk (3.5" powered) to SATA on the motherboard of my desktop machine. In all cases I have not been able to see the disk either in the operating system (currently Win 10) or the BIOS – which works when connected SATA > SATA in my both machines. I'm a bit stumped given that I've tried 2 different cables. I've read that what I'm trying to achieve is possible and assumed that this type of cable would have done the trick. On looking through this thread there are multiple instances of people running 6 disks - and in fact the first post shows an image of the eSATA port being used -the only thing I can see different from what I have done is that the picture on the first page looks like it is a normal SATA > SATA cable with an adaptor - whereas what I have got is a single cable cable with the two different connectors at each end.

I'm actively looking at moving my NAS to unraid from Windows 8. Disks will be: 3 x WD red 3tb (1 as parity) 2 x 1.5tb 1x Sandisk 240gb SSD as cache (to be purchased). I have an N36L which I've owned since new, as far as I can remember I've newer upgraded the BIOS - certainly never flashed it. My two initial questions are:- 1- Will the N36L "as is" allow me to add a sixth hard disk or do I need to do something in the BIOS to allow this (I'm aware of what to do physically i.e. place a second disk into the ODD bay - split the molex power and run an esata cable from the back of the server.) 2. I'm sure I've read somewhere that the additional disks will only run at half sata speed - unless something other fix is applied. Can anyone help with pointing me in the right direction this and is any speed drop off significant? I'll be using the server for sabnzb, sonarr, radarr. I've recently changed my Plex server from the N36L to a separate PC which serves content from the NAS (mainly because the N36L lacks the power for transcoding). Hope you can advise. Thanks