June 8, 201214 yr Hi Everyone, I'm trying to figure out what controller card I should purchase. I'd like for it to have at least 4 internal Sata III or II ports, and would love for it to have at least 2 esata ports. And I don't want the switching kind, I would use the internal and external ports at the same time. I'm thinking about putting my cache drive in an external enclosure. What would be really awesome is if I could put 2 drives external and have a raid 1 for my cache. I know that there are even some cards that support a timed spin down in the cards bios, so you don't have to worry about unraid being able to make that happen. Here's my setup. I have an Intel BOXDP35DPM motherboard. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121314 This motherboard has 3 PCIE x1 slots, 1 PCIE x16 slot, and 3 PCI slots(I do not want to use the pci slots). The 3 PCIE x1 slots, and the PCIE x16 slot are being occupied by 4 SIIG SIIG SC-SAE012-S2 cards, which have always worked great. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815150095 My thinking is to replace the 2 port card in the X16 slot for a more robust item. This would also allow me to add another date drive to my 15 drive case, maxing it out. Past that I just plan on replacing smaller drives in the array with larger drives as needed.
June 8, 201214 yr Author Just came across this in another posting. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998052&Tpk=S25SLOTR Maybe I don't need the esata ports after all.
June 8, 201214 yr Just came across this in another posting. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998052&Tpk=S25SLOTR Maybe I don't need the esata ports after all. I think that's a good solution. Too many things can go wrong with an external drive - the cable comes loose, the enclosure has poor heat ventilation, etc. Also, the power bricks needed to run those drives are typically far less efficient than a power supply. There are plenty of cards that will plug into your PCIe x16 slot and give you more ports. If you are only adding a single drive then you could even use a cheap card like this in a PCI slot. Note that adding more than one drive to that card will introduce a bottleneck in your system that will slow down parity checks, but with just a single drive you'll see no bottleneck.
June 8, 201214 yr Author Do you have any thoughts on the Raid 1 part of the question? If the drives are internal, and unraid is unaware of the array, how would I know if a drive failed? That was part of my thinking originally about having them external. I'd get an enclosure that beeped or the lights were different when the drive inside wasn't functioning.
June 8, 201214 yr The RAID 1 is certainly do-able, I know WeeboTech among others have pulled it off. I believe the hardware requirements are very specifi, and the setup isn't for the faint of heart. I personally wouldn't use that solution as it adds too much complexity to what is otherwise a very simple system. If you are concerned with the lack of parity protection on your cache drive, the simplest option is to not use a cache drive. Another option would be to modify how often the mover script runs - you could set it to run once per minute if you like. The simplest server will always be the most reliable. Adding these layers of complexity will just create more maintenance work on your end and it will make damage control that much more difficult.
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