Hi,

 

I'm new to unRaid and I just got my unRaid trial running on a temporary PC so that I can get used to it and learn about it. The only thing missing now is an LSI card, of which I don't know much about. I've been roaming these forums and reddit and I pretty much managed to get a list of many LSI cards. What I don't understand is:

- is there a difference between them?

- is there a limit of disk sizes they support? I noticed that most people here have 3TB and 4TB drives. What about 8TB - 14TB drives? Would these also work?

 

So I found these to be commonly used:

LSI 9201-8i
LSI 9211-8i
LSI 9207-8i
LSI 9300-8i
LSI 9201-16i
LSI 9300-16i
Dell H200/H310
IBM M1015

 

 

I also understand that they need to be flashedto IT mode.

Preferrably I would like to be able to get 16 drives connected, to start with. Would you rather recommend to get two xxx-8i or one xxx-16i? On ebay in Germany the xxx-16i I can find for 100€, which is OK.

 

And do I also understand correctly, that I then need to get an SFF-8087 to SATA breakout cable, something like this?

 

Many thanks for your help!

 

Odom

 

 

Edited March 31, 20197 yr by Odom

2 minutes ago, Odom said:

is there a difference between them?

There are, some are SAS2 and PCIe 2.0, some SAS2 and PCIe 3.0, some SAS3 and PCIe 3.0, for Unraid use with spinners (without expanders) they will all perform similar.

 

4 minutes ago, Odom said:

What about 8TB - 14TB drives? Would these also work? 

Yes, there's no limit with any sizes for the foreseeable future.

 

5 minutes ago, Odom said:

I also understand that they need to be flashedto IT mode.

Some are IT mode only, e.g. 9207, 9300, but flashing to IT is easy if needed.

 

5 minutes ago, Odom said:

Would you rather recommend to get two xxx-8i or one xxx-16i?

Whatever works best for you, in terms of total cost and number of available PCIe slots.

 

6 minutes ago, Odom said:

And do I also understand correctly, that I then need to get an SFF-8087 to SATA breakout cable, something like this?

Yes, cables need to be forward breakout like that one, reverse breakout look the same but won't work for this.

10 minutes ago, Odom said:

SFF-8087 to SATA breakout cable,

Just another note, SAS3 models like the 9300 use SFF-8643 to SATA

Thank you for the help! i ended up getting the LSI 9201-16i off ebay. That way, if I need to expand in the future, I still have another PCI slot I can use.

what's your motherboard, there is a compatibility issue for those cards with consumer grade motherboard,

 

I have LSI 9201-8i (Flashed into IT mode) which is not detected in my both machines (Asrock Z270i Motherboard & Gigabyte Z68AP)

 

So be careful.

Edited April 3, 20197 yr by EmualDave

On 3/31/2019 at 8:44 AM, johnnie.black said:

Just another note, SAS3 models like the 9300 use SFF-8643 to SATA

I bought an IBM m1015 card flashed in IT mode(this card plays well with my motherboard apparently) . I'm having trouble finding an answer but can I move my existing array to this without issue? Will unraid look for my array and not find it? Is this usually plug and play? This is for expansion. Do these cards generally leave unraid to control parity or do they try to take over?

24 minutes ago, DuneJeeper said:

I'm having trouble finding an answer but can I move my existing array to this without issue? Will unraid look for my array and not find it? Is this usually plug and play?

Yes to all.

2 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

Yes to all.

Crap! Unraid won't find a moved array. OK, what can I do to fix that before I try it? Thanks for the help! 

14 minutes ago, DuneJeeper said:

Unraid won't find a moved array. OK

I'm sorry, misread your post, Unraid will find the array, it's plug'n play.

9 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

I'm sorry, misread your post, Unraid will find the array, it's plug'n play.

Whew! Good news! Thanks!