Disk drive setup questions

[bluto]

First, thanks to all the users who have posted to this board – I've learned a lot from you so far.  I will be building my first unRAID server as soon as my components get delivered.  I have some questions about how I should connect the drives on the motherboard. 

 

My motherboard is the Abit AB9 PRO.  It has 6 SATA ports on the ICH8R controller, 2 SATA ports on the JMB controller, and 1 SATA port on the SIL controller (also has an eSATA port on this controller).  I also will have an Adaptec 1430SA 4 port SATA card on the PCI-e X16 slot.  I want to order 2 Rosewill RC-211s 2 port SATA cars on the PCI-e X1 slots, but they are out of stock at NewEgg until the end of July. 

 

The reason I wanted this equipment is that I read on the board that it is slower to complete a parity check if you have multiple hard drives on the same bus channel.  Therefore with this hardware, I could have 6 hard drives on the ICH8R, 4 on the Adaptec PCI-e X16, 1 on the JMB, 1 on the SIL, and 1 each on the Rosewill PCI-e X1for a total of 14 hard drives at the highest performance.

 

Later, I read on this board that the PCI-e X1 might be able to handle two drives if they are not sequential.  That would bump my configuration up to 9 hard drives on the motherboard, 4 on the Adaptec, and two each on the Rosewill's for a total of 17 hard drives at the highest performance (really 16 as that is the unRAID limit). 

 

What is the best strategy for connecting the hard drives to the SATA ports on the motherboard and the add-on cards?  Should the parity drive be on the SIL motherboard controller because I probably won't be using my e-SATA port so the parity would never have to share a channel on the bus with another drive?

 

I'm replacing two Infrants with 4 drive each, plus I ordered three drives with my system.  Total of 11 hard drives to start with.  One of them will be a cache drive and one the parity drive.  These will go in 3 SATA backplanes so that I don't have to open the machine up to hook up more drives in the future.  My goal for the system is to have a cache drive internal in the computer case and 1 hot swap parity drive and 14 hot swap data drives for a total of 16 hard drives.

 

Any suggestions on the best way to connect the drives to the various SATA ports for best performance would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks for the help – this is starting to get fun.

[jimwhite]

I want to order 2 Rosewill RC-211s 2 port SATA cars on the PCI-e X1 slots, but they are out of stock at NewEgg until the end of July.

Check out monoprice.com , they have the exact same card, rebranded, lower price 

 

 

[SSD]

You might want to check out THIS post.  It may help you decide how best to optimize your performance.