Around 5 years ago I migrated WHSv1 to WHS2011 and Drivebender within a Norco 4020 case with a single SM AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 card with reverse (or is it forward?) breakout cable. I was running a mix of 1 and 2TB drives mostly, and a 640gb OS drive. I eventually got a 3TB drive and tried it on the SM controller. It didn't want to recognize it so I put in on one of the motherboard ports. Got another couple of 4TB drives and did the same. I had a Highpoint SATA card so I eventually added it.

 

This setup is maxed out at 16 drives now and I finally am ready to add a controller, a second AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 was the plan early on and I'd like help verifying it will work. The lack of >2TB support (or was it 3GB/s limit?) was an issue a couple of years ago with the 3TB drive. I'm feeling done with WHS2011, I really only use the whole setup as a file server. I use Crashplan installed on each PC and the server so I don't do backups to WHS.

 

unRAID looks like it would work great for what I need. I've been digging around a little on controllers and have some questions and could use some help getting caught up. It seems like the second SM card is still relevant.

 

Here's the hardware I'm working with:

 

Biostar TH67+ motherboard with 2 of 4 slots taken:

PCIe 2.0 x16 = empty

PCIe x1 = Highpoint 2 port SATA card

PCIe 2.0 x16 = AOC-SAS2LP-MV8

PCI = empty

 

16gb RAM

i3-2120T

Norco 4020

I ordered 4 SAS breakout cables 5 years ago, still have 2 ready to go.

 

Questions:

 

1. It looks like there may be various revisions of the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 card. Ones on Newegg state 6GB/s and reviewers seem to state 4TB drives being used. Do I currently just have an old version of the card without larger drive support, i.e. keep my 1 and 2 TB drives on this card. And/or if there is really a newer version should I not mix drives <=2TB with drives >2TB?

 

2. Do I need to upgrade/downgrade to a certain AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 BIOS for JBOD (on a new one)?

 

3. Any motherboard issues, like both x16 slots being used? Also, I'm okay with losing the Highpoint card.

 

4. Crashplan. Looks like unRAID supports it. I'm wondering if I will need to re-up everything, I currently just have a few shares backed up like \Photos. Do I just need to keep the file structure the same?

1. It looks like there may be various revisions of the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 card. Ones on Newegg state 6GB/s and reviewers seem to state 4TB drives being used. Do I currently just have an old version of the card without larger drive support, i.e. keep my 1 and 2 TB drives on this card. And/or if there is really a newer version should I not mix drives <=2TB with drives >2TB?

 

AFAIK all SAS2LP are 6Gb/s and support >2TB, the SASLP is 3Gb/s but also supports >2TB

 

 

 

 

AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 works fine in unRAID, and works fine with 8TB drives.  I ran that setup for a while when I had a machine with less SATA ports.