16 port SATA card that isnt $600?

[zryder]

Hello everyone. I am looking to find a 16 port, or 2 8 port SATA cards for an unraid build. The end goal is to have 20 drives.

Since the software is handling the raid, I would think we could do without using super expensive raid cards..

So how would you interface 16 drives?

4 drives will be on the motherboard (mabee 6, depending on the board), leaving 16 on an external card.

The end goal is for media streaming

Do you guys have any suggestions on cards that are known to work well with unraid for reasonable prices?

 

Thanks

[aiden]

I would think 2 8-port cards would be better for throughput than 1 16-port card, unless you're talking a PCIe 16x port.  The 8 port cards are much cheaper.

[zryder]

The board I am planning on installing this on has PCIe 16x and PCIe 1x slots, so I could put 8 or 16 card in it.

 

Any suggestions on specific cards?

[aiden]

There is a list in the wiki of cards that have been tested.

[WeeboTech]

At the current time there are no supported boards for 16 ports.

The most densely supported tested and reliable card is the Supermicro PCI-X 8-port AOC-SATA2-MV8

I'm sure the Supermicro 8 port PCIe SAS card will be supported soon, however I believe at the current time it works, but certain aspects of low level status do not work.

There may be other hardware being tested by limetech, therefore I would suggest keeping abreast and subscribing to this thread in case there are further updates from limetech or others.

[erikatcuse]

If you want to be a sas tester check this thread out.  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3109.0

 

It's an 8x card with 8 ports and you can find it for about $200

 

I've been using it for over a month with no 'real' errors.  I believe Tom is working on 5.0beta and it might have more support for this card.