M.2 SATA Controller?

[jmcguire525]

I was looking for a way to add a few more sata ports to a mITX build, the on-board chipset only has x6 and if the nvme slot is occupied by a sata device then one of the sata ports is disabled.   Would this card work for me... I haven't been able to find any specific information on it, not sure if it acts as its own controller and would pass through as pci-e or if it would still be using the on-board sata controller.

 

m.2 sata expansion card

 

Edited February 2, 2019 by jmcguire525

[Hoopster]

4 hours ago, jmcguire525 said:

not sure if it acts as its own controller and would pass through as pci-e or if it would still be using the on-board sata controller.

It uses an ASMedia SATA controller.  Many IOCrest products use Marvell chipsets which should be avoided, but, ASMedia seems to work well with unRAID.

 

Check your motherboard specs.  Many times, installing a PCIe M.2 card disables a PCIe slot (just like a SATA M.2 disables an onboard SATA port).

 

This is only an x1 PCIe card, so, you shouldn't lose much if that is the case.

 

EDIT:  If you think your disk needs will expand with this server beyond what the 2-port PCIe card can provide, you should consider an LSI HBA if your single Mini-ITX PCIe x16 slot is available.  That will give you up to 8 additional SAS/SATA ports.  Some can even support as many as 16.

Edited February 1, 2019 by Hoopster

[jmcguire525]

5 hours ago, Hoopster said:

It uses an ASMedia SATA controller.  Many IOCrest products use Marvell chipsets which should be avoided, but, ASMedia seems to work well with unRAID.

 

Check your motherboard specs.  Many times, installing a PCIe M.2 card disables a PCIe slot (just like a SATA M.2 disables an onboard SATA port).

 

This is only an x1 PCIe card, so, you shouldn't lose much if that is the case.

 

EDIT:  If you think your disk needs will expand with this server beyond what the 2-port PCIe card can provide, you should consider an LSI HBA if your single Mini-ITX PCIe x16 slot is available.  That will give you up to 8 additional SAS/SATA ports.  Some can even support as many as 16.

 

So it should be transparent to the system, not acting as its own RAID card?  Sounds like its worth trying out!  I would add a full sized card for more sata connections but my only x16 slot is taken up by a GPU, this is a secondary NAS and won't need any more drives, but hopefully this will do what I'm looking for.

[Hoopster]

9 minutes ago, jmcguire525 said:

So it should be transparent to the system, not acting as its own RAID card? 

Yes.  The item you linked is a non-RAID card, but, that is what you want.  The system should just see two more drives as if they were attached to MB SATA ports.  The controller will appear as a separate device in the OS, but, the drives attached to it are just drives available to unRAID.