How do you add lots of hard drive sata ports to your setup?


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24 minutes ago, DCWerick said:

look for HBA (host bus adapter) thats what i use for mine.

Silverstone 6port (sample)

You don't need those raid type ones (unraid don't need those)

 

Ok, so this gives you 6 extra SATA connection plus the 4  SATA  or so the motherboard has built-in. It will also take up your only PCI-E slot so you can't have a graphics card along with this. 

 

So this setup would only provide 10 drives. What if you want the full capacity of 30 drives? How can that be achieved?

 

Thanks.

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Sounds as if you are trying to use a server for Unraid with very little expansion capabilities?  
 

In terms of a graphics card then Unraid itself does not require one (although some motherboards might) as it is administered using a browser and this can be done over the network.

 

There are HBA boards that support more than 6 ports.    I have a LSI one with 16 ports.   I believe there are others with even more.  You can also have multiple such HBA boards if you have the free motherboard slots in your server.

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People who need that many drives tend to get used, rackmounted server gear, you'll find decommissioned Xeon/EPYC systems with tons of PCIe slots, SAS HBAs with lots of ports/bandwidth, and maybe get a separate disk shelf as well for expansion.

Downsides are size, power consumption and noise...

 

Tend to recommend going with few large drives these days, large numbers of drives are cumbersome.

 

Edited by Kilrah
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