Hi all,

 

I currently have an unraid 5 setup running on an old AMD system with only 1GB of ram, It has the following drives:

4tb WD red parity

4 x 2TB Seagate data drives

1 x 80GB cache drive (unused)

all boots from a 4GB Corsair USB stick

The cache drive is an IDE connected to an IDE port

One 2TB drive is a Sata connected to IDE through an adapter

 

I also have a core i3 with 16GB ram that is running Windows Server 2008 and runs a few Windows VM's the run Plex, Sonarr, SabNZBD and Deluge.

 

What I want to do is combine the unraid and Windows server so lift the drives from the unraid box, put them into the newer box, upgrade to Unraid 6 and move the Windows VM's to Unraid.

 

The new box only has 4 sata ports and no IDE's so I cant connect all the drives and so I'm looking for I guess two options....

 

Option 1 (expensive) buy three 5TB drives, build a second Unraid and copy the data across and setup a cache drive for the VM's

Option 2 Lift all the drives from the old box to the new box and put a sata controller card in there.

 

Looking through the forum I've found a fair few 6/8 port controllers for around $70 but being in the UK I cant find them here.

 

The new motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-H61M-DS2 DVI with one PCIE x16 and 2 PCIE x1 ports..

 

Oh and can I check the Realtek GbE is compatible too?

 

 

So I suppose after all that ramble, can anybody recommend a known working controller card for me, ideally 4 ports or above.

 

 

Thanks in advance

Your problem is using both the "good" and "low cost" as definers!   

 

I did get one of these a couple of weeks ago:

 

  http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Express-Controller-HyperDuo-Tiering/dp/B00BUC3N74?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

 

And it does work very nicely.  However, it does have a Marvell - 88SE9230 - controller in it and I believe that there have been issues with that brand and virtualization.  You could search the forum and see if the issue has been resolved or if you could get around it.  I did pick a design with a heat sink on it as unRAID will have occasions where it reads and writes to all the disks in the array simultaneous for long periods of time and I understand that these chips do get hot under such conditions.  I wanted the extra bit of cooling to increase long term reliability.

 

By the way, there are several other companies that make SATA boards that are virtually identical to this StarTech one.  Just take a look at the UK Amazon site and look at the pictures to find them! 

 

Using the core I3, I don't think you will have any problems with the RealTek.  You can do a quick check by simply installing unRAID on a Flash Drive and booting the computer.  If you can access the server via the GUI, the RealTek is working.  (Don't worry unRAID will not write to any of your present hard disks in that computer unless you tell it to do so!)

Thanks for your reply Frank1940, by low cost I mean up to around £150 or so, don't really want to spend much more than that if I don't have too.

 

The Marvell controller is my problem exactly really, every time I think I have found a good one there is a problem with it somewhere, I will be using virtualisation and reading the threads about it the problem hasn't been solved yet 

 

I found also a different one but then at the bottom of the thread found problems with Unraid 6...

 

Maybe it would be easier to just swap the motherboard out?

I only need about 8 drives at the moment so hows about one of these?  Adaptec 2241000-R RAID 1430SA

 

Are they any good in v6?

They work very well on v6, just make sure it's on the latest bios, needed for >2TB support.

 

Oh I'd definately need to flash it then, most of my data drives are 2TB but I have a 4TB parity so replacements would all be 4TB's

 

How about the Dell Perc H310's I've read good things on those and found a few system pulls on eBay.

 

Do both the Adaptec and the Dell work OK with virtualisation? If I got the H310 is it two mini sas to 4 sata cables that I'd need?

H310 is a very good option for 8 ports, it has to flashed to IT mode and you need two mini SAS to SATA forward breakout cables (reverse breakout looks the same but it won't work)

 

AFAIK both have no issues with virtualization.

 

 

Awesome stuff, thank you for helping Jonnie.black

 

I'll post back once I have one of them working, I think I'll go for the H310 over the Adaptec if I can find one though to future proof a little bit. I use 6 now but would probably add another to protect the VM drive also so would be close to the 8 limit pretty quickly.

 

Have found a case that will hold 12 3.5" drives to so am ready to move I think

Well I'm back,

 

Unraid all upgraded to V6, PC rebuilt into a Fractal Design Define R5 case (really nice case) and a Dell H310 too.

 

All working great so far including the two Windows VM's that I installed too

 

 

Thanks for the advice all!