Hey, I live in Australia and am wondering if anyone can recommend some cheap SATA2 PCI cards.. Don't really know the different between 1x, 4x and 16x...

 

Just hoping for a cheap fix to expand my array from 8 drives! Hoping for either 4 or 8 port PCI cards.

PCI or PCI-e?

PCI would be better financially won't it? And since read/write speeds are generally low in Unraid it won't make much of a difference right?

 

EDIT: My board has the following:

2 x PCI-E X1

2 x PCI

 

What would you recommend?

I don't know anything about prices in Australia, so I will quote prices in US dollars.

 

You can buy a 4 port PCI card for about $60 (Promise TX4)

 

You can buy an 8 port PCI card for about $100 (Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8)

 

The problem with PCI cards is they will slow down parity checks.  Not a huge issue since you only run them about 1 time a month, but if your PCI bus gets up to 8 drives, my guess is you'd be running parity checks at < 10,000 KB/sec (about 1/5 of the speed if using PCI-e controllers).

 

You can buy a 2 port PCI-e x1 card for about $30 (SiL 3132 based)

 

You can buy a 4 port PCI-e x4 card for about $100 (Adaptec 1430SA).  It needs an x4 or better PCI-e slot, which you don't indicate that you have.  But I have to believe that you have a PCI-e x16 video card slot.  This will work in that slot.

 

There is a new 8 port PCI-e x4 card that is not currently compatible, but my guess is that in the next few months it will be a viable choice.  Not sure the price yet, but it is not hardware RAID so should be in the $100 - $150 range.

 

You might be interested in this post to better understand the difference between PCI and PCI-e technology and speed implications.

If you want cheap with better performance than PCI, I'd try looking for a PCI-E SATA card with the Silicon Image 3132 chipset.  This model supports port multipliers which allows for a single SATA port to attach to 5 drives via a port multiplier module (3726 chipset).  I did this with my last 5 drives and it has been working great for several months now.  Parity times did not take near as bad of a hit as I suspected and typical read/write rates are unaffected.

 

I don't know how much luck you'll have finding these in Australia, but the card I got was a 2-port (so it can support 10 drives) for $44US and the PM module is $82US when bought separately (I bought mine with a 5-bay hotswap case).  Prices are surely better now, as it looks from the above post.  It's something to look into.

You can buy a 2 port PCI-e x1 card for about $30 (SiL 3132 based)

 

Is their such thing as a 4 port PCI-e x1 card that is compatible with Unraid? I did googling and found that while they may be 4 port, you can only you 2 at one time.

 

Also, I only need a 4 port card.. Not interested in 8 as my case can't handle more than another 4!

 

 

Thanks for your help .

No 4 port x1 cards, but you can buy 2 x1 cards and get the 4 ports you need.

No 4 port x1 cards, but you can buy 2 x1 cards and get the 4 ports you need.

 

I was considering that!

 

I also read somewhere that I might lose my second LAN port if one of the lanes is shared with it. My board is an Abit AB9 Pro, sounds bizarre to me!