After much help from reading this forum, I have my unRaid server up and running.  I scavenged some old networking parts and cables to get the job done, but the transfer speeds are ver slow ~10Mb/s.

 

I did a new build with an Asus motherboard that I got on sale at Fry's.  It is the F1A55-M LX R2.0.  It has the Realtek 8111E NIC and I read that can be one of the problems.  I also am using a Fast switch (not GB) and old cables to connect the server to my PC.  I am going to transfer about 3TB to the unRaid server, so 10MB/s ain't going to cut it.

 

Now to my question:

I am going to go to Fry's to buy a new GB NIC, GB Switch, and CAT6 cablesr.  I need a recommendation on which NIC to buy, and whether it should be PCI, PCI-e, etc.  My motherboard has limited expansion and I want to save the best ports for SATA cards.  I have 6 on board SATA ports, but I want to get to 15 someday. 

 

My motherboard has these slots open: PCIEX16, PCIEX, PCI, and another PCIEX16.  What type of NIC should I buy and how do I get 9 more SATA ports out of this motherboard?

 

Thanks in advance.

NIC: Get an Intel 1gig PCIe card.

 

SATA: Monoprice.com has SIL3132 2-port cards for ~$15 each. Stepping up to 4-port cards cost just as much as 8-port cards so you might as well just skip that evolution. With your three PCIe slots, you can add three 2-port cards (6 add'l) or get an 8-port and a 2-port (10 add'l). The nice thing about the 2-port cards is that you buy them as you need them without dropping a lot of cash each time. Once you get to a huge array, expenses grow exponentially.

Thanks.  Fry's was out of the Intel NICs and only had other Realtek based NICS.  I went ahead about a GB Switch and new CAT6 cables.  My transfer speed is now at ~20-30MB/s.  I was hoping to get higher than this.  I will try to track down an Intel NIC as my next step. 

 

Also, my parity drive is enabled with no cache drive.  I have a couple of 320GB laptop drives I could install as a cache drive to see if that bumps it up more. 

Thanks.  Fry's was out of the Intel NICs and only had other Realtek based NICS.  I went ahead about a GB Switch and new CAT6 cables.  My transfer speed is now at ~20-30MB/s.  I was hoping to get higher than this.  I will try to track down an Intel NIC as my next step. 

 

Also, my parity drive is enabled with no cache drive.  I have a couple of 320GB laptop drives I could install as a cache drive to see if that bumps it up more.

 

My transfer speeds run from the upper 20's to the low/mid 30's.  I have never heard at anyone above the mid 30's due to the limitations of a parity write.

 

I used an intel NIC in lieu of the Realtek chipset on my board and it helped a little.

If you aren't using a fast 7200 rpm drive for parity that can help as well.  It won't make a difference for data drives, but does because of the parity operation during a write on that drive.