Well it looks like I filled up my all my on board SATA connection and need to purchase a SATA card. I recall when unRAID first came out we had to use specific IDE cards for the server to work... is that still the case with SATA controller cards or can we use ones that are cheaper? If I don't have to buy the $100 ones that Tom uses, that would be swell

The Supermicro one is the best PCI sata controller in my opinion

Wow - I wasn't aware that there was an 8 port!

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009&Tpk=pci%20sata%20controller

 

This is the one you speak of, correct?

That's it. I'm running a couple of these in two different machines & they run fine in a regular PCI slot.

Wow - I wasn't aware that there was an 8 port!

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009&Tpk=pci%20sata%20controller

 

This is the one you speak of, correct?

 

LOL!!!!    Can't believe you missed it, we've been talking about this card for a long time.

Now Supermicro has a SAS/SATA card that we're waiting for the Kernel folks to have working driver that is compatible with unRAID/emhttp.

I'm looking for a lower end card on the cheap.  All I need is 2 SATA port to get me going.  I would look at a 4 SATA card if its in my price range.

 

Any suggestions?

I'm looking for a lower end card on the cheap.  All I need is 2 SATA port to get me going.  I would look at a 4 SATA card if its in my price range.

 

Any suggestions?

 

2 ports.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&cs_id=1040702&p_id=959&seq=1&format=2

 

4 ports.

 

http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&cs_id=1040702&p_id=2667&seq=1&format=2

Someone mentioned using the Suprmicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards in PCI slots. Keep in mind that PCI is a shared bus and limited to about 120MB/s, well practically about 100MB/ through all PCI slots. Well this probably won't be a bottleneck for unRAID at least until single drives become available being able to read with more than 100MB/s, but be aware of. Cheers

Someone mentioned using the Suprmicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards in PCI slots. Keep in mind that PCI is a shared bus and limited to about 120MB/s, well practically about 100MB/ through all PCI slots. Well this probably won't be a bottleneck for unRAID at least until single drives become available being able to read with more than 100MB/s, but be aware of. Cheers

 

With some motherboards, the PCI bus supports 66Mhz providing the possibility of 266Mhz.

http://www.compute-aid.com/64bitpci.html

 

The PROMISE SATA300 TX4 and the Silicon Image 4 Port SATA 150 Controller both support 66Mhz bus (if your motherboard supports it).

Yeah, but this is still way beyound PCI-X 64bit/133Mhz offering of 1GB/s and also the AOC-SAT2-MV8 does more than 266MB/s... But you are right being 66Mhz better than 33Mhz :-) The shared PCI architecture still remains, effectively bridging all PCI slots.

Yeah, but this is still way beyound PCI-X 64bit/133Mhz offering of 1GB/s and also the AOC-SAT2-MV8 does more than 266MB/s...

 

This is a known, putting a PCI-X card into a PCI slot limits it's capability.

Since we have very few SATA drives reaching above 130Mb/s It's still a valid route.

 

FWIW, on a mITX board with a 66mhz PCI slot and a Promise TX4 running at 66Mhz I was able to get a parity check speed of around 66,000Kb/s.

I actually could not believe it was running so fast for PCI until I realized it was a 66Mhz bus.

 

The TX4 and some 4 port cards have a small FIFO buffer on them which also seems to help.

 

In comparison, my ABIT AB9 Pro and 8 drives with PCIe ports benchmarks parity around 57,000kb/s to 65,000kb/s.

 

So for a small number of drives on limited slots PCI can still be effective.

FWIW, on a mITX board with a 66mhz PCI slot and a Promise TX4 running at 66Mhz I was able to get a parity check speed of around 66,000Kb/s.

I actually could not believe it was running so fast for PCI until I realized it was a 66Mhz bus.

 

Weebo, out of curiosity how many drives were attached? I'm getting reasonably good read/write performance from my SIL3124 PCI card but it only has one HDD attached currently (with in a few percent of onboard PCI-e sata). 

 

 

FWIW, on a mITX board with a 66mhz PCI slot and a Promise TX4 running at 66Mhz I was able to get a parity check speed of around 66,000Kb/s.

I actually could not believe it was running so fast for PCI until I realized it was a 66Mhz bus.

 

Weebo, out of curiosity how many drives were attached? I'm getting reasonably good read/write performance from my SIL3124 PCI card but it only has one HDD attached currently (with in a few percent of onboard PCI-e sata). 

 

I had 4 WD Green 5400RPM 1TB drives on a Promise TX4.

Since it was the only PCI card, I doubt there was contention on the bus.

I did have occasional lockups. But i think it's some compatibility issue with MSI boards and linux (not so much unRAID).

My other MSI boards exhibited similar behavior until I appended a boot time parameter.

 

I think I'll order the Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 card and do some testing with it.  I'm pretty curious how it will perform.