Screwed up on hardware purchase -- Looking for help with SATA and Enclosures

[Naldinho]

Building a second Unraid and I made a purchase that was not well researched. So I have two issues

 

1) The onboard SATA controller is SATA II but the 6TB drives are SATA III. Normally this is not an issue but with this particular motherboard it is. Apparently it doesn't accept SATA III drives.

 

My Solution: Buy a add-on SATA III controller. I assume that is fine? I'll use the onboard for some older drives

 

2) Case is two small and doesn't have enough drive bays. I don't know why I didn't check this but because I'm looking for a small build I just assumed 6-8 drives would be no problem if I convert 5.25 bays but I'm maxed out at 5 drives even with a 2 to 3 converter.

 

My Solution: Looking at a 4 or 5 bay external enclosure with eSATA --- I know this is possible but after my bad purchase I'm now looking to get advice on what I need to know about eSATA and external enclosures to get it to work properly with unraid --

 

What am I supposed to be looking for in a eSATA card?

 

Will any enclosure do the trick or do I have to look for something specific?

[Frank1940]

Won't it just be cheaper to buy a new case that actually fits your needs?  The eSATA solution that will provide STAT III speeds to multiple drives has be expensive because it is a relativity rare application. 

 

You could always resell the case or, possibly return it to the seller.  If you do an exchange, he might even forgive the restocking fee. 

[Naldinho]

It was a refurbished prebuilt system so no returning anything -- changing the case is an option but it is about the same cost as an external enclosure and involves more work.

 

The eSATA could be SATA II as long as it works with SATA III drives. This is going to be a second unraid just for media serving and as a backup to the main unraid so not need SATA III speeds just any controller that will work with SATA III drives.

 

There is a good chance there is no saving this and that I'll end up just having to buy 3 SATA II drives (I might have 1 or 2 somewhere so maybe less) and make a third unraid out of this and then buy new hardware and start over on the larger unraid with the 6TB drives. I am just exploring my options before going that route. I have honestly never heard of a motherboard with SATA II that wouldn't accept newer SATA III drives until now.

[trurl]

... I have honestly never heard of a motherboard with SATA II that wouldn't accept newer SATA III drives until now.

Neither have I. Do you have a link to something that explicitly states SATA III drives cannot be used?

 

I also recommend getting the right case instead of going forward with what you have. What eSATA enclosure do you have in mind that is not more expensive than a new case? Unless the eSATA enclosure provides separate eSATA connections for each drive it is not going to perform well with multiple disk access. Parity builds and checks must read all drives at once so if you have 4 drives going through one eSATA for example then it is really going to slow things down.

[Naldinho]

... I have honestly never heard of a motherboard with SATA II that wouldn't accept newer SATA III drives until now.

Neither have I. Do you have a link to something that explicitly states SATA III drives cannot be used?

 

http://h20565.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?sp4ts.oid=3718645&docId=emr_na-c02711513〈=en&cc=us

 

It is the first time I've heard of this.

 

I don't have an enclosure in mind. The case with proper fans and everything for my first build came out to around $300 and when I quickly looked at enclosures I saw they start at just under $200. The mistake in my reasoning is that the motherboard size isn't the same and I could probably get a case that works for this for much less than my first build.

[Frank1940]

... I have honestly never heard of a motherboard with SATA II that wouldn't accept newer SATA III drives until now.

Neither have I. Do you have a link to something that explicitly states SATA III drives cannot be used?

 

http://h20565.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?sp4ts.oid=3718645&docId=emr_na-c02711513〈=en&cc=us

 

It is the first time I've heard of this.

 

I don't have an enclosure in mind. The case with proper fans and everything for my first build came out to around $300 and when I quickly looked at enclosures I saw they start at just under $200. The mistake in my reasoning is that the motherboard size isn't the same and I could probably get a case that works for this for much less than my first build.

 

Well, I went looking at your Link and, of course found this quote:

 

"Third party 6Gb/sSATA hard disk drives are not supported on HP Workstations featuring only 1.5Gb/s (SATA Gen1) and 3Gb/s (SATA Gen2) SATA ports.
HP has worked with the hard disk drive vendors so that all 6Gbps SATA hard drives provided by HP will work on 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s ports."

 

I then googled for some supporting evidence that there were some SATA III disks that didn't work.  I was unsuccessful.  Perhaps, someone else will have better luck.  I would also bet that the Disk Drives that you buy from Hp today for these units are SATA III units and these drives will also work with any controller that supports SATA III. 

 

What I really suspect is the old fashioned FUD factor that is often used in Marketing--- Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt!  I first encountered it when the first third party vendors of tape drive units for IBM mainframes came on the market back in the 1960's.  IBM told their salesmen not to say that these devices won't not work but to just infer that there could be problems. 

 

I don't know how old that motherboard is but I would be more worried that it does not support drives larger than 2.2TB.

 

[Naldinho]

I considered it would be a sales trick but my original discovery was actually of people who were having issues although I only found two discussions of it.

 

One of the discussions involved someone figuring out how to make WD Red drives work and he was successful so I need to find that again and see if it is worth doing his fix.

 

The motherboard seems to be from 2011 so I don't think there should be a size limit. I ran into that on a previous Dell that I bought for a friend -- again I thought all SATA accepted all sizes until I asked here and people corrected me.