From motherboard Sata's to an HBA, no problem?

[mrdavvv]

Hello!.

 

Im in the process of upgrading my server, currently running Proxmox but im changing it to Unraid very soon. Running out of ports on my motherboard, so i just purchased a nice HP H220 HBA to get 8 X Sata's, the question is..... can i do my Unraid installation and use my current drives (Connected to Mobo), and when the time comes, change all the drives to the HBA without getting into trouble?.

 

As the HBA its in IT mode, its supposed to work transparently, for the OS its the same drive, but i don't want to find that for some weird reason the SO doesn't see the drives as the same unit and something fails.

 

How Unraid identify the drives?, UUID?, HD serial?.

 

Thanks a lot for the help, im exited to start testing Unraid and be part of this great community!

[JorgeB]

1 hour ago, mrdavvv said:

HD serial?.

This, and you can change them to the HBA, if it's really a true HBA in IT mode, no personal experience with that model but I believe it's been mentioned before by other users.

[mrdavvv]

Thanks Jorge, yeah its an IT card so with your confirmation im more confident. The model its a LSI 9207-8i wich comes on IT by default, cheap and PCI 3.0

Edited January 1, 2021 by mrdavvv

[kc8flb]

UNRAID is really good about switching disk controllers as long as UNRAID can see the drive directly. Recently, I did the the exact opposite of what you are doing by moving 8 drives from a LSI IT HBA to motherboard SATA ports during a motherboard/CPU upgrade. I took a screen shot of all drive assignments before doing this, in case there was an issue. NO issue at all, when I powered back up and started the array, UNRAID automagically saw all the drives and started the array correctly. Don't forget to take the screenshot of drive assignments, just in case. Good luck.