Recommended controllers for Unraid


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On 1/29/2021 at 12:57 PM, JorgeB said:

2 ports: Asmedia ASM1061/62 (PCIe 2.0 x1) or JMicron JMB582 (PCIe 3.0 x1)

My actual experience with two of these controllers with the ASM1061 chip:

Bought on Ali, both are making problems. Drives get recognised but after a while read/write errors are reported. It is not possible to erase/null the hole hdd. Testet different Sata cables, different PCIe slots and finally a other motherboard. Allways the same errors.

Dono why, but I think these controllers are crab.

Next days will arrive some 4 port adapters with ASM1064 chip, hope that they are not the same waste of money.


Does somebody have experience with these adapters with ASM chips?

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@JorgeB

Thanks for your quick and helpfull reply.

 

That is what I have:

Spoiler

H5fa366373090485bb705d3f97b165e0dP.jpg

(Actually it does not look so bad, if you check the feedbacks. Maybe they sell just defective products without testing them before)

 

I gonna try the ones which will arrive soon. Maybe I`m lucky.

 

Are there some other brands (selling in Europe) you can recommend?

Edited by jojo345
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2 minutes ago, jojo345 said:

Are there some other brands (selling in Europe) you can recommend?

The one I mentioned is available in Europe, got a few from Amazon.es, nobrand direct from China might be OK, might not, once got one, also an Asmedia, that kept giving CRC errors.

  • Thanks 1
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This crappy adapters made me nuts.

You know when people start to disassemble there computers into peaces because of a little bugger like that?

 

Better not buy direct china stuff, but the prices here are silly. I dont pay €25-50 plus shipping for a 2 port adapter card like this. Then its better to look for a other mobo.

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Hi, I just received my first SAS HBA.

I bought a SAS 9207-8i which already had the latest firmware and IT mode enabled.

I also ordered two SFF-8087 to 4x SATA forward cables as described in the first post.

 

Unfortunately, I received the following cables: AWM 20744 E170689 SAS3.0

 

Can I use these aswell for my WD Reds or do I need to send them back and get the SFF-8087?

22-02-12 00-00-37 7986.jpg

Edited by Marv
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after my adventure yesterday with my adaptec having a heart attack, I think I'm going to swap it out for an LSI and I'm aiming for a 9207-8i... however googling now has be paranoid about fakes - any opinions on these listings? 

 

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/175133386946?epid=1385797553&hash=item28c6c368c2:g:pEwAAOSwPP1h9NgJ&frcectupt=true

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/185266212380?epid=25025684119&hash=item2b22ba0e1c:g:Y6gAAOSwLHFh6-tx&frcectupt=true

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/143372493429?hash=item2161aaa275:g:1TAAAOSwAUZhb8B2&frcectupt=true

 

either that or I play it safe and go for something like the SilverStone ECS04 which I believe I'd then have to flash, but at least I'd know its legit... didn't realise this was a problem in the world, but seems to be plenty of talk about it!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am building a new system and have long term plans to have 16 drives so I was thinking one of the LSI 16 port cards made sense to get. I’m unclear on the 6gb/s vs. 12gb/s difference in the older and newer cards, though. Some research I’ve done has led me to believe I might not need the extra speed from the newer card, but I wasn't exactly sure. My MB is Asus PRIME Z590-P. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 1/29/2021 at 12:57 PM, JorgeB said:

Asmedia ASM1166

FYI pretty sure my controller based on this chip is corrupting data, will investigate further to confirm, and while I doubt it's a general issue with this Asmedia chip it's always good to keep this in mind with these cheap controllers, you can get a good one or not, sometimes they have UDMA CRC issues, or it could be more serious, hence when possible it's preferable to use an LSI HBA, they can be bough used at reasonable prices and should be much more reliable, though they also consume more power and generate more heat.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've had a bout of instability recently, and I'm pretty sure my Areca SAS controller is a problem and preventing a boot.  I have a spare SAS controller, but found my supermicro server won't boot if i put the same brand of sas controller in (it gets to the sas controller bootscreen and gets confused and holts during controller POST).  I have 24x SATA drives powered by 6x SAS ports (2x on the supermicro, 4x on the areca) connected to a SAS backplane, and 4 additional drives on the mainboard SATA ports.

 

To solve this I figured I would by a 4 or 6 port SAS controller and disable onboard and pull the areca.

 

I have a few questions:

1) Will I hit any bandwidth problems with a single controller over a single PCI-E 3.0 port to a SAS backplane?  I'm assuming I'm still going to be limited by the SATA drive speed here.  Would it be better for more than one controller or is all sharing the same channel anyway?

2) If i'm running in IT mode, is there any point in a battery on the card?  Particularly under a heavy write?

3) I found this:

NEW LSI Logic Controller Card 05-25699-00 9305-24i 24-Port SAS 12Gb/s pci-e 3.0

Does this work well with Unraid?  It has no battery, considering 2, is this a problem?

4) With LSI, in passthrough/jbod, I am assuming i can switch out to any controller/direct sata and its not doing any fruity logical volumes work when flashed to IT.

 

Thanks.

Edited by spamalam
added in sas backplane mention
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15 minutes ago, spamalam said:

1) Will I hit any bandwidth problems with a single controller over a single PCI-E 3.0 port to a SAS backplane?  I'm assuming I'm still going to be limited by the SATA drive speed here. 

Should be good for roughly 250MB/s per drive, so likely not a bottleneck.

 

16 minutes ago, spamalam said:

2) If i'm running in IT mode, is there any point in a battery on the card?

No, batteries are for RAID controllers with onboard cache RAM, those are not recommended with Unraid.

 

16 minutes ago, spamalam said:

Does this work well with Unraid?

Yes.

 

17 minutes ago, spamalam said:

4) With LSI, in passthrough/jbod, I am assuming i can switch out to any controller/direct sata and its not doing any fruity logical volumes work when flashed to IT.

Correct.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi There,

 

I'm looking to setup an Unraid server but after reading about RAID/HBA cards, I'm getting confused and would appreciate advice about it.

 

The motherboard is a Supermicro H11SSL-i which has 16 Sata 3 ports and the chassis has a 12 Hot Swap 3.5" cage bay.

 

  • Do I need a HBA card in this scenario? Connecting up to 12 Sata cables might put some load on the lanes and having a HBA should be better?
  • Should I need HBA, the chassis comes with a LSI MegaRAID SAS 9341-8i (Can't find any info about IT flashing it), is it applicable or should I get one of the cards listed in the first page?
  • Came across some discussions that for Sata drives, a maximum of 2TB will be displayed/used even if the drives have larger capacities. Should I switch over to using SAS drives instead?

Thanks!

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6 hours ago, LeoTSH said:

Connecting up to 12 Sata cables might put some load on the lanes

Not sure what you mean by this, number of SATA cables is not a problem except for cable management.

 

6 hours ago, LeoTSH said:

Should I need HBA, the chassis comes with a LSI MegaRAID SAS 9341-8i (Can't find any info about IT flashing it), is it applicable or should I get one of the cards listed in the first page?

Apparently it can be flashed to IT mode but there won't be SMART:

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/crossflashing-of-lsi-9341-8i-to-lsi-9300-8i-success-but-no-smart-pass-through.3522/

 

6 hours ago, LeoTSH said:

Came across some discussions that for Sata drives, a maximum of 2TB will be displayed/used even if the drives have larger capacities. Should I switch over to using SAS drives instead?

That's incorrect, it can happen with very old controllers/backplanes, with SATA or SAS.

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Quote

Not sure what you mean by this, number of SATA cables is not a problem except for cable management.

Ahh thanks for clearing that up!

I guess I can just forego the idea of getting a HBA and can just connect 12 drives using 12 SATAcables?

I was wondering if directly connecting the drives without using a HBA will affect CPU performance.

 

Quote

That's incorrect, it can happen with very old controllers/backplanes, with SATA or SAS.

I see, then I can stick with the SATA drives

 

Thanks!

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