April 20, 200719 yr Can everyone post what PCI-E SATA card they are using, if it's 100% compatible and reliable (also any benchmarks would be highly appreciated). I currently waiting to build two systems, 1. a small formfactor with a Mini ITX board and perhaps a low profile 4 port SATA card, to support 5 drives in total. 2. a 12+ drive chassisbased, maybe based on either the Norco SATA case. Looking to find reliable PCI-e SATA boards for both. Thanks.
April 20, 200719 yr Quoting another poster from another thread: Commell LV-674 Pentium D Mini-ITX Mainboard http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/products_id/489 Also http://www.commell.com.tw/product/SBC/LV-672.HTM http://www.commell.com.tw/product/IPC/CMB-672.HTM I was going to use this but could not find a satisfactory small form factor case that can handle the 4 drives. If you find one, Please update me. I ended up building a CMB-673. What a great machine! It has a PCIe slot, so I was thinking of adding a PCIe eSata card and using a SansDigital MSUM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111025 This would have allowed maximum expandibility to 8 externally accesible drives + 2 internal. But I actually use my cmb-673 for nagios monitoring, dhcp, dns, syslog consolidation, php-syslog, snort, and backup storage with hdup & rdiff. So,the unraid OS was a little too sparse for me to use. If unRaid were just an RPM Driver install using a boot flash as a key check, I would be all over it. (I still may consider it in the future). For the record CMB-673 http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/IPC/CMB-673(NS).HTM and http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/IPC.htm Six SATA ports on a mini ITX board - no cards needed.
April 20, 200719 yr Author Thanks, we've been communicating on that thread! I n this one I'd just like to identify usable PCI-e SATA boards.
April 25, 200719 yr I've just successfully installed a SYBA SD-SA2PEX-2IR PCI Express SATA II Controller Card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815124027. It was fully supported in unRAID, v4.0-beta9, uses sata_sil24 module, thanks Tom! It's based on the Silicon Image 3132 chipset, which supports 2 internal or external SATA II ports. This may not sound exactly like what you want, but 3132-based cards claim to support the new port multiplier technology, as in this http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.asp. Tom says support is still 'experimental', but it seems exciting for the future, to be able to easily add 10 SATA ports (one 3132-based card ($35) and 2 5-in-1 port multiplier cards (2x$85)). I especially like the Addonics cards' no-slot feature, uses any unused slot bracket but no PCI or PCI-E or other slot type, requires a floppy power connection only. See also this thread http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=567.0. I've only just installed and tested the Syba card, and the speed 'seems' very good, but I can't give you any long-term reliability thoughts. On the first boot, there were lots of boot errors and unRAID did not start, but after a reboot, it seemed to reconfigure itself and came up perfect. I moved the SATA cable attached to /dev/md2 (my third SATA drive) to the first SATA connector on the Syba card, from the the third motherboard SATA connector. After the installation and the extra reboot, and a re-select of my HD on the Devices page, the unRAID server started up perfectly, not even a parity check required. In other words, I moved a drive to a completely different disk controller, and nothing had to be rebuilt, re-initialized, whatever! Try doing that with most other RAID systems, especially if striped! (I'm very new to unRAID, so my terminology may be wrong.) I bought this one from Newegg for $25, it's now $35, similar to other comparable cards. Price range for 2-port SATA II cards seems to be about $25 to $40. To get a 4-port card, price jumps to $110 and up and always seems to have RAID. I could not find anything with 4 or more ports that did not also require paying for RAID even if you don't want RAID. I did install it first on a Windows XP, in order to flash the BIOS to the latest, 7.3.13, from Silicon Image web site. I just checked and all 3 SATA drives have spun down, that is sooo cool!!! Can't wait to add more drives and the pro version of unRAID.
April 25, 200719 yr I like this one.... SoNNeT TSATAII-E4P PCI Express SATA II Controller Card It's has lots of potential (20 drives!!!), compatibility is still in question, yet still something to consider.
April 26, 200719 yr Author RobJ, very niice!!! Did you try the addonics multiplier with it? Would you know if there are any performance penalty (throughput/letancy etc) that a port multiplier would introduce?
April 26, 200719 yr No, can't afford it for now, but almost certainly will in the future. Somewhere I read that all of the SATA drives on a port multiplier have to share the 3.0 Gb/s max SATA II speed, so benchmarks with varying numbers of drives will be important. Like you, awaiting testing by others... For now, the 2 port 3132-based PCI-Express cards are cheap, allows me to grow my system slowly.
June 1, 200719 yr Author Here is a preliminary list of contenders, if you are using one please let us know: PCI-e SATA SoNNeT TSATAII-E4P PCI Express SATA II Controller Card Koutech IO-PESA201 PCI Express SATA II Controller Card RAID 0,1,0+1 JBOD - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816104004 SYBA SD-SA2PEX-2IR PCI Express SATA II Controller Card - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124027 SIIG SC-SAE012-S2 PCI Express x1 SATA II Controller Card - OEM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815150095 StarTech PEXSATA22 PCI Express SATA II Controller Card RAID 0/1 - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158036 SABRENT ST-PX2T 1-lane 2.5Gbps PCI Express SATA II 4 Ports Controller Card RAID 0/1 - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816220005 Adaptec 2240900-R PCI Express 4-lane 2.5 Gb/s SATA RAID 1430SA Kit RAID 0/1/10 JBOD - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103058 NORCO-4627 PCI Express SATA II Controller Card RAID 0/1/0+1/5 JBOD - Retail http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816133004&ATT=16-133-004&CMP=AFC-Smarterdeals
February 7, 200818 yr Author Bump: Any updates? Looking for 1. Cheap (no more than 120 bucks) 2. PCI-e 4. SATAII x 4 internal ports. 8x would be awesome, but all of those are RAIDed and hence may be problematic for the OS. thanks!!!!
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