I have one of the original Tower boxes that Tom build years ago that was based on the Intel motherboard.  As us old timers will recall that board had only 2 SATA ports on-board and Tom build that original system based on IDE drives not SATA drives.  About 6 months ago I decided to pull out all the IDE drives and convert my Un-Raid to an SATA box.  All went fine and I now have a 14 drive array using 3 el-cheapo 4 port PCI cards and the 2 on-board ports.

 

I would like to grow the box out to the full 16 drives but don't now how to do that based on the fact that all 3 PCI slots are full.  I can't seem to find an adapter card that supports 6-8 SATA ports AND is still just PCI AND is not over $500.  Anyone have any ideas....!

SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz 8 PORT SATA Controller Card .. about $100 on most sites like newegg

 

its pci-x; but should be backwards compatible with standard pci too

"its pci-x; but should be is backwards compatible with standard pci too"

 

I used one of these for almost a year.  Worked fine.  The only negative, as you already know, is a lot of drives on the PCI bus really slow down parity checks / rebuilds.

 

"its pci-x; but should be is backwards compatible with standard pci too"

 

I used one of these for almost a year.  Worked fine.  The only negative, as you already know, is a lot of drives on the PCI bus really slow down parity checks / rebuilds.

 

 

For sure, parity checks now take nearly 2 full days.....

"its pci-x; but should be is backwards compatible with standard pci too"

 

I used one of these for almost a year.  Worked fine.  The only negative, as you already know, is a lot of drives on the PCI bus really slow down parity checks / rebuilds.

 

 

For sure, parity checks now take nearly 2 full days.....

 

and you want to grow to 16 drives on pci..

have you priced out the cost of a new motherboard (or even a used one).

There have been a few offers on the board.

 

Consider the cost of the new PCI-X controller vs the cost of a motherboard that will give you 8 SATA ports on board.

 

 

"its pci-x; but should be is backwards compatible with standard pci too"

 

I used one of these for almost a year.  Worked fine.  The only negative, as you already know, is a lot of drives on the PCI bus really slow down parity checks / rebuilds.

 

 

For sure, parity checks now take nearly 2 full days.....

 

and you want to grow to 16 drives on pci..

have you priced out the cost of a new motherboard (or even a used one).

There have been a few offers on the board.

 

Consider the cost of the new PCI-X controller vs the cost of a motherboard that will give you 8 SATA ports on board.

 

Although a good way to go, it will get a little pricy.

 

You could upgrade the MB, CPU, memory, PSU (if needed), and buy a PCIe x1 controller (2 ports), and continue to use 2 of the PCI controllers.

Adding that up, I get a cost of about ~$225 (+ PSU if you need one).  You'd have 16 drives (8 on PCIe, 8 on PCI).

Parity checks would still be slow, but a little faster than you are right now (about 30% faster than today)

You'd still need to replace those 2 PCI cards.  I'd suggest waiting.  There is a very nice 8 port PCIe x4 card that you could add later for about $130 and replace both PCI cards.  That card is not currently compatible with unRAID, but should be soon.  After that your parity checks will no longer be PCI bottlenecked.

 

The alternative is just buying one of the 8 port Supermicro cards and retiring one of the 4 port cards.  14 drives on the PCI bus would be slow on parity checks (15% slower than today), but performance doing normal things should be fine.  The cost is only $100.  You'd be able to grow 2 more drives (to 18) with this setup.

 

I think you have a hard decision to make.

Although a good way to go, it will get a little pricy.

 

You could upgrade the MB, CPU, memory, PSU (if needed), and buy a PCIe x1 controller (2 ports), and continue to use 2 of the PCI controllers.

Adding that up, I get a cost of about ~$225 (+ PSU if you need one).  You'd have 16 drives (8 on PCIe, 8 on PCI).

 

Post a "Want to Buy" on the board and see if you have any offers.

You might get a package deal with CPU and memory. You may be able to use the same cpu you have today.

(not sure of the memory.. maybe someone else can chime in).

 

Also see... http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3811.msg33401#msg33401

 

 

I think the 8 port SuperMicro card is the route I'm going to take.  Slow parity checks don't bother me too much as I don't need to do them very often and normal usage performance is just fine.  Thanks everyone for your valuable input.....

 

Do we think that Tom is going to grow beyond 16 drives....?

Do we think that Tom is going to grow beyond 16 drives....?

Current unRAID version is 21 total drives in array...

parity, 19 data, plus one more for cache.

 

Joe L.