I have one x1 PCIe slot available and I was thinking of buying a card that I could use for preclearing.

 

But there are not a lot of those available that would have 2 external SATA connectors. I tought I would connect some

2 drive enclosure to it. And use that just for preclearing.

 

What would you recommend? Is x1 enough for two drives preclearing at the same time?

 

Suggestions on 2 hard drive enclosures will be appreciated as well! 

 

Assuming your motherboard slot and card are at least PCIe 2.0, it should be sufficient for 2 spinners. An x1 PCIe 2.0 slot has 500MB/s of bandwidth, and even the fastest spinners top out around 190MB/s.

Thanks, specs show that P5E-Q shoud be PCIe 2.0.

 

Was it a Sil3121 card that would work with the unraid?

 

 

I just bought a SYBA SD-PEX40049 card specifically for preclearing.  It's a 2 port PCI-E 2.0 x1 SATA III card where each port can be either be internal or external.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124051

http://www.amazon.com/Syba-6Gbps-Switch-eSATA-SD-PEX40049/dp/B006SF68OS/

 

EDIT:  Don't use this in an unRAID array: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=36289.0

Thanks!

 

I also have not found a thread for installing 'screen' to v5.0. I have read that it would need some

other packages as well to work?

 

 

I read that that Syba SD-PEX40049 does not support 4TB drives. 

 

Is there any card that would?

 

 

I read that that Syba SD-PEX40049 does not support 4TB drives. 

 

Is there any card that would?

That card uses a ASM1061 chip.  I have the MediaSonic version of that card and it supports > 2.2TB drives just fine in Windows so not a card problem might be a driver problem however.

Hmm... the manufacturer says "Up to 3TB".

http://www.sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=1195

 

But may just not update info.

 

Thanks!

 

EDIT: I found a Silverstone SST-EC05 pretty cheap at a local store. It's got Marvell 88SE9130, so it should work?

Hmm... the manufacturer says "Up to 3TB".

http://www.sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=1195

 

But may just not update info.

 

Thanks!

If it supports 3TB it is highly unlikely they don't support 4TB.  The next unsupported size is > 64TB (I think - but could easily be wrong).

You're not wrong.    If it supports 3TB drives, then it supports 4TB, 5TB, etc.   

 

The actual size limit for a GPT partition is 18 Exabytes !!  [18 million TB  ], although I don't know what the Linux file system restriction is (e.g. the max Windows size is 256TB).

 

... but I don't think you'll need to worry about whether the controller will support any drive you'll be buying in the foreseeable future 

 

I recently got one of these from ebay and it arrived Friday, fitted Saturday and plugged two drives into and ran a couple non correcting parity check, zero issues at all, great little card.

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-2-eSATA-SATA-3-0-to-PCI-E-PCI-Express-Card-Adapter-Converter-6-0Gbps-ASM1061-/141006206664?