I'm thinking about building a second unraid box having just about filled my first box. I have seen that you can get HBA card with 16 ports for drives to run on one x8 PCIe slot meaning i could get 24 ports, including mobo ports, from just one additional card.

 

But what is a HBA card?

HBA = Host Bus Adapter

Whats the difference between a hba, raid card and port multiplier?

A raid card is a HBA. A port multiplier allows multiple drives to connect to a single SATA port. A 2 drive e-SATA enclosure uses a port multiplier.

 

Which 16 port HBA are you considering? I don't know of any that are used with unRAID. The SASLP-MV8 It the most common PCIe x4 HBA used. It supports up to 8 drives.

I'm liking the idea of one of these:-

 

http://www.xcase.co.uk/LSI-SAS-9201-16i-Internal-p/hba-lsi%20sas%209201-16i.htm

 

The reason is that I want to use my old/working Asus m4a78lt-m. It has 6 on board sata ports so adding the 16i to the 8x PCIe would give me 24 ports. I have looked at the SASLP-MV8 but doesn't it have problems coming out of s3?

 

I really need the S3 function to be fully working.

Why do you really need S3 to work? Why is letting the drives idle and spin-down not enough?

A mix of convenience, cost cutting and integration with my home control systems but mainly it's for the speed of coming online.

 

 

 

 

Why not keep it always on? If you have your system working with the Linux power management features for the CPU and the drives going into standby/spindown you should have a minimal power usage server.

 

That solves the speed to power on to being able to respond. When my system is in it's idle state with drives in spindown it draws under 35 watts.

 

 

I'm liking the idea of one of these:-

 

http://www.xcase.co.uk/LSI-SAS-9201-16i-Internal-p/hba-lsi%20sas%209201-16i.htm

 

The reason is that I want to use my old/working Asus m4a78lt-m. It has 6 on board sata ports so adding the 16i to the 8x PCIe would give me 24 ports. I have looked at the SASLP-MV8 but doesn't it have problems coming out of s3?

 

I really need the S3 function to be fully working.

 

The LSI looks nice but its almost 4 times the price for only double the ports.

I suppose I could have it on all the time. It's just it would be running when we're not even at home (especially annoying when I'm working away). Is there a way to turn the system off at say 2am unless HTPC is on and use the mobo's timed power on function to turn it on at say 8am?

 

Does anybody know of a card (8 port or more) that lets you use s3?

Does a port multiplier show multiple drives as individual drives or does it show multiple drives as one big drive?

Does a port multiplier show multiple drives as individual drives or does it show multiple drives as one big drive?

 

It shows individual drives. SATA speed is important for performance when using port multipliers. Each HDD needs about 1.5Gbps to perform well. A SATA II (3Gbps) will support up to 2 SATA II drives (or SATA III) on a SATA II port. A SATA III(6Gbps) port will support up to 4 SATA III drives. If a slower drive is used the entire port will be slowed.