Newbie needs help expanding storage.

[RedshiftRedshifted]

I need more sata!

 

Let me start with specs.

 

 

I have an HP Omen 25L GT15-2134. The mobo (below) shows in my dashboard as HP 8B1D , Version 11.

 

My goal is to buy a 5 bay sata enclosure (example) and expand sata by pulling the GPU and installing something like this. I’m only using of my M.2 nvmes currently for ssd and want to install another. So if I can preserve that slot it would be great.

 

I have exactly zero experience with this but can already tell expanding storage is going to be an addiction.

 

Would this be possible to yank the GPU and installing the sata adapter?

 

[whipdancer]

You can read up on HBA's here.

You will probably find some discussions on these boards about different ways of adding additional drives. I'm sure someone here could chime in on the AE card - but I personally wouldn't chance it working. I'd buy an 8 or 16 port HBA off of ebay - specifically from the Art of Server. I upgraded from 2x Dell 310 HBAs (8 port) to a single 16 port 9300-16 HBA - all purchased from there. I'm sure there are probably other reputable sellers as well.

[RedshiftRedshifted]

Ok, I like this. It looks like a better solution! Plus there are rear port options.

 

Couple questions. 
 

How many satas can I run off one hba port? (I’m seeing 4) 

And is this a plug and play with unraid? Will unraid see the drives on reboot?
 

Thanks for the response.

 

 

 

[RedshiftRedshifted]

Also, is there a drive size limit? Trying to build out to 100tb in as little drives possible.

[Wody]

On 8/15/2024 at 1:38 AM, RedshiftRedshifted said:

How many satas can I run off one hba port? (I’m seeing 4) 

And is this a plug and play with unraid? Will unraid see the drives on reboot?
 

Also, is there a drive size limit? Trying to build out to 100tb in as little drives possible.

How many devices per port depends on the port, SFF 8087 and SFF 8643 (the 9300 uses the 8643) run 4 devices per port. More modern cards use SFF 8654 which has two versions, one for 8 devices, and a smaller version with 4.

If you want to connect them from a card that has one of those to an enclosure that has SATA connections like your example, you'll want a forward breakout cable, which has a 8643 connector break into 4 SATA connectors. There are also reverse breakout cables which have some wires switched, so they work the other way around. If you get one of those, and connect it, drives won't be detected.

 

As for plug and play, they should be, as in unraid will run them probably a lot better than sata-cards due to the issues those can have, but some motherboards won't boot without a GPU, so you should test that before buying something.

 

For drive limits, the amount of drives you can use is limited by the license you have, but there is no size-limit on drives, they make 24TB HDD's now so you could use those, and bigger SSD's than that. Where I am only 30TB SSDs are available, but they make bigger too, up to 100TB or so. I wouldn't use SSDs for storage though, since they require to refresh their contents once a year, while HDD's can keep their information for years without power. Of course if you're talking about drives that size, you wouldn't worry about what card to use, because you'd have enough money to buy a 9600-24i or the 9700 that are currently in development.

 

[whipdancer]

On 8/14/2024 at 6:38 PM, RedshiftRedshifted said:

Ok, I like this. It looks like a better solution! Plus there are rear port options.

 

Couple questions. 
 

How many satas can I run off one hba port? (I’m seeing 4) 

And is this a plug and play with unraid? Will unraid see the drives on reboot?
 

Thanks for the response.

 

 

 

The more  common hba’s (inexpensive ones) will handle 4 drives per port. I have 2x Dell 310’s (4 per port, 2 ports) as spares and run 9300-16i (4 per port, 4 ports) as my primary. I run a mix of 12tb to 20tb hdd. 
 

No drive size limit that I’m aware of.

 

 The card must be flashed to IT mode for Unraid use.