Psychosis Posted March 5, 2009 Share Posted March 5, 2009 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. Link to comment
Psychosis Posted March 5, 2009 Author Share Posted March 5, 2009 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? Link to comment
SSD Posted March 5, 2009 Share Posted March 5, 2009 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. Link to comment
Jon Posted March 5, 2009 Share Posted March 5, 2009 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. Link to comment
Psychosis Posted March 5, 2009 Author Share Posted March 5, 2009 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 . Link to comment
SSD Posted March 5, 2009 Share Posted March 5, 2009 No 4 port x1 cards, but you can buy 2 x1 cards and get the 4 ports you need. Link to comment
Psychosis Posted March 5, 2009 Author Share Posted March 5, 2009 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! Link to comment
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