Hi,

 

I need some advice on array expansion. I've got a SATA Card with 8 ports and currently have 8 drives connected to it in an array. One of the drives is smaller (4TB) than the others (ranging between 12TB to 16TB). I have a share configured to only be on the smaller drive for downloads. I've got a large case and would like to expand my array further. Physical space is not an immediate issue but I've seen that drives in an array should all be on the same SATA card and not mixed between different SATA cards or a SATA cards and onboard SATA.

 

I was thinking to move the 4TB drive out of the array and swap it with a 16TB drive. Then connect the 4TB drive to my mainboard's SATA. The intention would be to keep the 4TB drive for downloads and as its a scratch disk am not too fussed if it's not protected somewhat with the parity drive. Is there a way to do this in Unraid? Would I still need to add the drive to the array? And am I effectively stuck expanding my array beyond the 8 drives due to the limited ports on the SATA card?

 

Thanks in advance

6 minutes ago, paulmorabi said:

Physical space is not an immediate issue but I've seen that drives in an array should all be on the same SATA card and not mixed between different SATA cards or a SATA cards and onboard SATA

 

This isn't accurate, you can use whatever SATA ports are available

25 minutes ago, Michael_P said:

 

This isn't accurate, you can use whatever SATA ports are available

 

Perfect, thank you!

What is the plugin SATA card and is it in the IT-Mode?   (Some Cards are actually RAID cards in a non-raid configuration and they can be somewhat problematic when trying to move drives between their ports and on-board ports.)

3 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

What is the plugin SATA card and is it in the IT-Mode?   (Some Cards are actually RAID cards in a non-raid configuration and they can be somewhat problematic when trying to move drives between their ports and on-board ports.)

Yes, its an LSI card in IT mode.