SATA Controller Cards


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56 minutes ago, axipher said:

Should I go ahead with the AOC-SASLP-MV8 or find something else?  Also the Firmware_3.1.0.15n.zip in the first post is also not working.

Personally, I would pick up another card.  Those SASLP cards have proven to be troublesome in Unraid servers.  It is not that they absolutely refuse to work.  It is that they seem to be working and then barf.  

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On 3/6/2021 at 6:57 PM, Frank1940 said:

Personally, I would pick up another card.  Those SASLP cards have proven to be troublesome in Unraid servers.  It is not that they absolutely refuse to work.  It is that they seem to be working and then barf.  

 

Thanks for the reply.  Looking at the thread below, I think I'm looking at picking up maybe a LSI 9211-8I mostly because it's just for connecting some spinning 12 TB hard drives and I already have the SFF-8087 to SATA fan-out cables.

 

 

Would that be a good choice?

 

 

 

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7 minutes ago, axipher said:

Thanks for the reply.  Looking at the thread below, I think I'm looking at picking up maybe a LSI 9211-8I mostly because it's just for connecting some spinning 12 TB hard drives and I already have the SFF-8087 to SATA fan-out cables.

 

 

Would that be a good choice?

 

I looked at this listing for this card and I suspect that it is a RAID card and does not support IT-MODE which is optimal for Unraid.  I am going to ping @JorgeB who is more of an expert in this card than I am.  If it is a RAID card, it can be flashed with the IT Mode Firmware.  (The LSI chips can be used in a number of different modes depending on the firmware.  While LSI was selling these models, they had a number of different models (that all used the same chip set) with different firmware on them.  This causes great confusion in the market place as vendors tend to use the most popular mode numbers regardless of the firmware!)

 

By the way, many folks actually purchase these cards off of E-bay.  There are some very good bargains there.  Search there site for 'LSI card' and if you want already flashed to 'IT MODE' add that as a parameter.  Remember on E-bay you are buying the vendor as much as the product!  By the way, the used cards are an excellent option.  They are usually being pulled from servers that were in Server farms and they were actually made by LSI unlike most the LSI cards being sold today as new today.  (LSI will sell the chip sets to anyone and many Chinese companies are 'cloning' the old cards to produce 'lookalikes'!)

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  • 4 weeks later...

hello everyone.

I am still new to unraid. 

I have a rig with an ASUS TUF Gaming H470-PRO, 16Gb RAM, i5-11500. The main purpose is PLEX, back-up and a few Docker containers.

I live in Germany so I have to source my parts from the EU market to avoid customs and taxes (really jealous on US guys). 

My MB has 5 sata ports. 

2 are taken by the SSDs and 2 by two HDD. 

I plan now to shuck 2-3 more WD drives to get some extra storage and I am running out of sata ports. 

I could change the SSDs to NVMes, but those are 10-12euros per piece more, and in case of failure, harder to debug. 

So I am looking now at a SAS HBA board, but I am a bit confused. 

Case can handle 12 x 3.5 HDDs  + 2 SSDs, so I am trying to see what I can do to upgrade, and hopefully be also prepared for future expansions, when I run out of my case and then try to add a secondary case for storage. 

 

As mentioned, I am still novice. 

I was thinking to get a LSI 9211-8i for the beginning. Found some nice ones for 50 Euros used. Then when I need more space I would get a SAS extender like this: https://www.ebay.de/c/15028012781?iid=143056442454 or similar and then route the extra SAS connections to another case for extra HDDs. 

 

Now my questions: 

Will this work well or will the hard-drives be limited in speed due to the 9211-8i being on a PCIe 2.0 bus? Should I spend 120 Euros for a 9207-08i as it is PCIe 3.0? 

Will daisy chaining the SAS extenders reduce the speed the drives can be access by a lot? I think this would generally be ok except for parity rebuild/checks :)

 

thank you.

 

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13 minutes ago, Emanuel87 said:

Will this work well or will the hard-drives be limited in speed due to the 9211-8i being on a PCIe 2.0 bus?

There is plenty of bandwidth with a PCIe 2.0 card for HDDs.  I have the Dell H310 which is a clone of the LSI 9211-8i and it is not a performance bottleneck.

 

PCIe 2.0 provides 500 MB/s for each PCIe lane so in an x8 slot it provides 4000 MB/s theoretical total.  Assume around 20% overhead and actual bandwidth available will be 3200 MB/s or about 400 MB/s per drive.  This is more than enough for an HDD where the upper limit is around 200 MB/s.  For this reason, some even put these cards in an x4 slot and still do not feel bandwidth constrained.

 

You wont get the full speed of which an SSD is capable, but, it is recommended to attach SATA SSDs to motherboard SATA ports as these cards do not support SSD TRIM but motherboard ports do

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I just need a confirmation before buying a sata card!

My motherboard has the following slots.

My GPU is on slot number 4

LP1Xqzz.png

 

I need at least two more ports for array mechanical disks and the price should be less than €22 to avoid customs charges (extra >€20).

I found this card IBM H1110 for €19

https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-PERC-H200-H310-LSI-9207-8I-FW-P20-9211-8I-IT-Mode-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/124518659637?hash=item1cfde3f635:g:8lwAAOSwzM5f9-4E

 

Is it going to work?

(I know I also need a SFF-to-SATA cable)

Any other recommendation for less than €22?

 

 

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don't buy from China. they are usually fake especially when talking about older ICs.

go for a part from EU and pay a fair price. A 9211-8i is around 45 Euros in EU. a 9207-8i is around 80-90Euros. 

if you buy a counterfeit, you risk breaking your mb or end up with a 22Euros paperweight. 

Edited by Emanuel87
typo
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i just bought one from Ebay from italy. the guy seems to have more, but give me a day to test mine out before buying: https://www.ebay.de/itm/Controller-SAS-D2607-A21-LSI9211-8i-Flash-in-IT-Mode-CAVO-SAS-4-porte-SATA/274744468973?hash=item3ff80be5ed:g:5yAAAOSwnEFf7a0P 

 

ebay germany allows you to filter for products which are within EU: 

https://www.ebay.de/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=lsi+9211-8i&_sacat=0&rt=nc&LH_PrefLoc=3

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31 minutes ago, karateo said:

Can you recommend a specific shop in the EU? (Maybe PM if it is against the rules)

With E-bay and LSI cards, you are buying the vendor.  Look at the Vendor's reputation.  See what his policy is on returns.  You could ask a question of him to see what his response is and how quickly he answers you.  Look to see how long he has been a E-bay vendor. 

 

There are a lot of the older LSI cards that are advertised as 'New'.  Well that is a sure sign that they are counterfeit!   (LSI has 'disappeared' as a separate company several years ago.  You can find online that the rights now belong to Broadcom.  You can find what they currently make here:    https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage   )

 

However, Broadcom apparently still sells those older chip sets and several(?)  Chinese companies have copied the design of the older LSI boards (right down to the paper labels used on the genuine cards)!   These boards are usually  referred to as counterfeit as the true origin is being concealed.   And no one has any idea what the quality level of these cards are.  (Remember that while  genuine LSI chips are (probably) used, everything else is sourced elsewhere.)  Some of these manufacturers may produce a quality product but without his identifying marking on the board, there is no way for a average consumer to figure out what he is getting!   An long term E-bay vendor, with a reputation to protect, will be vetting his sources carefully to protect it.  

Edited by Frank1940
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On 4/13/2021 at 7:15 PM, Emanuel87 said:

i just bought one from Ebay from italy. the guy seems to have more, but give me a day to test mine out before buying: https://www.ebay.de/itm/Controller-SAS-D2607-A21-LSI9211-8i-Flash-in-IT-Mode-CAVO-SAS-4-porte-SATA/274744468973?hash=item3ff80be5ed:g:5yAAAOSwnEFf7a0P 

 

@karateo I have just checked the card and it works.

The seller seems to sell a lot of server hardware. The board looks used, even one of the fins of on the LSI chip cooler looks a bit banged, but the board runs.

and at 45 Euros I'm happy with what I paid.  

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Hello there, i just bought new hardware for my first Unraidserver and i love it. 

I am configuren stuff now for a while an did set up a plex server, so the last week i was just digitalising all my blurays. Worked fine, high water allocation did a good job and went to the next disk when its half full. So now it switched from the hard disks who are connectet to my motherboard to the harddisks of my extensioncard. 

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B08DFMTP44/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It didnt took long and...Device Disabled, replaced it, started a rebuild was writing on the next disk....Device diesabled. 

 

Lucky me i have two parity disks so no loss but now i feel some pressure. 

I just read several forums and now i know i bought the wrong card an i really need to be carfeull which card i buy..but after all the reading i am still not sure which card i can buy. I need six more sataports for my harddrive or maybe at least three more sataport. 

 

My MB is a Z490-A PRO with an Core™ i5-10600K on it.

 

I also have read this post:

https://wiki.unraid.net/Hardware_Compatibility#PCI_SATA_Controllers

but i am not sure if i can trust it because the card i have atm is also on the recommendet list. 

 

I just managed to plug one of the two failed devices to the motherboard (last slot) and started a rebuild, so i just have one failed disk and have a bit of security till the new Satacard arrives, but which one?

 

Thanks for any replies!

 

 

 

 

 

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I have found the following options

 

€22 New - China Noname ASM1166 (I don't trust this option)

€42 New - France Noname ASM1064 (I don't trust this option)

€49 New - Chinese from Amazon ASM1166 Some reviews for working with Unraid

€55 Refurbished - Dell H200

€72 Refurbished  - Dell H310

€115 New  - Amazon LSI LSI00301 8 Port 6Gbps SAS 9207-8i SGL PCI-E Host Bus Adaptor

 

I think the most reliable option is the LSI but the best value for money is the ASM1166 from Amazon.

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Thank you for your Replies, that is a big help!

@ChatNoir - thats a good one, i think i will go with the LSI LSI00301  9207-8i SGL.

@karateo - Thanks, but i have the ASM1166 in the 8 Port version and Trouble with it and its a Marvelcontroller on that. I wouldnt use that.

 

Do i neet to flash the LSI LSI00301  9207-8i SGL to IT mode?

 

I can buy it in ebay with "IT Mode" but i found here a post that there is no need to flash.

https://www.ebay.de/itm/New-LSI-SAS-9207-8i-IT-Mode-SATA-SAS-6Gb-s-PCI-E-3-0-Host-Bus-Adapter-LSI00301/392311926869?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item5b579cf055:g:slgAAOSwFTdc~qOy&amdata=enc%3AAQAFAAACgBaobrjLl8XobRIiIML1V4Imu%2Fn%2BzU5L90Z278x5ickkyMJZWL%2BqFSgQ3TOOe%2FNr7p4zSpNtFhZRR4CfQm3T05Mj0qkS03cbnftjM%2BDUxQutgvHLsFQuTcgZealVuftpvF%2BaI9R6OGu5ZX5U8Bi7qPRqVBZ1CDyR0lthSute0NRG6%2Fv4wUo5ccdm%2BAZbkQx98VSfAj23pNVJY1c9FHHlrAUe8llxblysd5XU%2BnrJ%2F3yOfG%2BECIiZqAYsy2pGCeGMjoE9Cke3XxVUG22VzwyIG0HTnJxg8uxbhZvToYokasZbpVEP4hYR7c%2F0qdoZepHBf%2Bq%2BwKAR3H9P6ZbTjSSIs2ZWpqxr1pqDhNnfl6OexN4ssUAP9V0Bg8%2FPt6UDo45yrbBdjC2JDYMVRV75eAO0bGJ6U0tg0M%2B6g63dK65Tt1Nt6J6oxwkIjOddaMN0%2BvYTkdI82TDZgooeSbSBWN7M5Z%2B8lZt92ghI4a29yiqDTGcaOWT%2B5f3tYPZz0le%2FnSp9bSPXnTEM7OSFjIJZNcIg5L3h7wGY8MNcXUDir3uuRuLzJ4QCGLLICmIU1TNaHzFTz74%2FoP2R2FMxt7sKicZGvcR%2B%2BYNhE6VEK2rW8vESkyuyxMK%2B8SKm5waAmr%2BGHZFCvP4lc96Nq167WYubY3n4%2BDEE9yYKm4Ry6YjX%2Fm9R7IJ0GJSkFPjNF%2F29Pz2NnpSYc23P7Nh1fKvQhQ8VJvtfa0fd5iJYmbUMa1smyK0na%2FRcKY0Wc3WXJ9Bui%2FzZffkC4mRYNqRiGljCaG3ooRhw9eTI8KfunDKDxQPLVqke88PaJapmVGzBEmGcyhXzA9zFQlqs6Xrv1HWAPHQGCHCyuRY%3D|cksum%3A392311926869a4c44013314d4b9c9b915a95498537c8|ampid%3APL_CLK|clp%3A2334524

 

Thanky for your Help

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