I currently have an ASUS P7P55D-E Pro, and just found out tonight that it only supports 11 drives. Well, 12, really, but it counts the unRAID flash drive as one of the 12 drives, so *really* only 11 drives. Can anyone recommend a replacement board that will support more than 11 drives?

...that's socket 1156..what CPU do you use on it?

 

I doubt that there are others around and that you can do an inexpensive swap....if you want to keep it, add a controller card, like the M1015.

 

In fact, that'll be the standard strategy anyway.

Otherwise, look for a server board that has an additional LSI SAS on-board, like

 

X10SL7-F -> http://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/Xeon/C220/X10SL7-F.cfm

X9SRi-3F -> http://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X9SRi-3F.cfm

H8SML-7F -> http://www.supermicro.nl/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron3000/SR56x0/H8SML-7F.cfm

 

...the LSI chip on-baord of these comes usually as a bargain, compared to the models without and the price of a separate card.

...that's socket 1156..what CPU do you use on it?

 

I have a core i3 installed. It was my old gaming machine from a few years back, and it was just laying around taking up space, so I figured I might as well put it to use.

A SM X8SIL(-F) will work well with that CPU..but only 6x SATA onboard...it will support ECC RAM though.

I doubt that there are others around and that you can do an inexpensive swap....if you want to keep it, add a controller card, like the M1015.

 

I was able to scrounge up a Dell PERC H310 controller... I saw a post from Johnodon where he was able to get this same card working with unraid, but he was booting through esxi. That's one thing I'm not quite clear on... do I need to flash IT firmware if I don't plan on virtualizing?

Hopefully someone with that card will notice your question and respond.    My nickel's worth (recognizing I do NOT have that card) is that yes, you'd need to flash the IT firmware, as I don't think the changes are so it can be passed through, but so it will work as essentially just a SATA controller without any RAID configuration.

 

... of course it won't hurt to simply try it without the flash

I doubt that there are others around and that you can do an inexpensive swap....if you want to keep it, add a controller card, like the M1015.

 

I was able to scrounge up a Dell PERC H310 controller... I saw a post from Johnodon where he was able to get this same card working with unraid, but he was booting through esxi. That's one thing I'm not quite clear on... do I need to flash IT firmware if I don't plan on virtualizing?

If it is like an M1015 then YES you would need to flash it.  Virtualizing it usually means setting up pass through on the card to the VM.  This just makes the controller available to the VM.  To the OS in the VM it is like it is running on bare metal as far as the controller is concerned.  So it if was necessary to run IT mode when it was virtualized it is probably going to be required on bare metal.  As garycase said it won't hurt to try it without the flash.  When I tried that with my M1015 unRAID did not see ANY of the drives attached to the card.