I have had 2 PCI sata controllers cards. They have worked fine for a year, but I needed more space, so I bought one with 16 ports.

 

I installed the new card and plugged all the drives in and booted. Booted up fine, but all those drives connected to the new card have red dots?

 

When the server boots it shows the sata card correct and in the card bios I can see all the drives connected.

 

What could be the problem? Syslog attached.

 

syslog.zip

I just went through the same sort of thing, you'll need to follow the procedure on:

 

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Make_unRAID_Trust_the_Parity_Drive,_Avoid_Rebuilding_Parity_Unnecessarily

 

and then you should be ok (you don't need to even rebuild parity if you do this, though you might want to run a parity check afterward to make sure).

 

Regards,

 

Stephen

Thanks Stephen, but it says "Make sure that all of your disks are correctly assigned, not disabled or missing."

 

And mine show as "Missing".  

Thanks Stephen, but it says "Make sure that all of your disks are correctly assigned, not disabled or missing."

 

And mine show as "Missing".  

You just need to use the "devices" page to re-assign the drives back to the correct slots in the array.

 

Joe L.

I hope that would be the problem, but no. On the devices page I cannot select the hdd's. They just aren't in the selectable list.

I hope that would be the problem, but no. On the devices page I cannot select the hdd's. They just aren't in the selectable list.

Then the new interface card is not being recognized.

 

Do you see those disks in the BIOS?  If yes, then does unRAID have a driver for the new interface card?

 

Which version of unRAID are you running?

 

Attach a syslog for any more detailed analysis.

I hope that would be the problem, but no. On the devices page I cannot select the hdd's. They just aren't in the selectable list.

Then the new interface card is not being recognized.

 

Do you see those disks in the BIOS?  If yes, then does unRAID have a driver for the new interface card?

 

 

I wonder if his new card is supported by unRAID, he did say it was a 16-port card and I don't recall anyone talking about using a 16 port card before...

 

Stephen

 

From his signature the new card is the 16-port HighPoint RockedRAID 2340 and it appears that they are not compatible with Unraid ...yet...?

 

Hope the OP did not buy this brand new.

I'm using 4.5.6. I have the syslog attached to the original post.

 

I bought this new yesterday, but I think I can return it and get a refund.

 

But this is such a cheap card comparing to any sata cards that have as many ports.

 

I'm just trying to use my old hardware to it's fullest.

 

Is there any hope this would be usable anytime soon?

 

I have 6 sata ports in the mb and I have 15 drives (I managed to add one drive with another sata card that I had to return) in my array in total. What would you suggest?

 

 

Damn, I think I'm just gonna return the new sata card and buy two of these:

 

http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SASLP-MV8.cfm

 

I have 2 PCI-E x16 and 1 PCI-E x8. I've got the graphics card on one of those x16's but is it more power effecient to change it to a x8 slot?

 

Those Supermicros don't even cost that much.

 

 

 

You can leave the graphics card where it is. The Supermicro card only requires an x4 slot, so it will be fine on either x16 or x8. It won't affect power consumption either way.

Remember that you'll need two pairs of special breakout cables for those SuperMicro cards.  All breakout cables.

 

Chances are you need the forward cables.

 

You'll need forward breakout cables if you are connecting the card directly to your hard drives.  You'll need SAS-SAS cables if you are using a case with SAS backplanes (such as the Norco 4220).  The reverse cables are for hooking a SAS backplane up to the motherboard ports, so you shouldn't need that.

Thanks for your input!

 

Is there any change that this card would work with unRAID in the near future? It's faster than the supermicro, so if this would work it would be my first choice.

 

How is the support for different cards been added to unRAID? Can this be succested or something?

A normal PCI 8 port or 16 port SATA controller card will never be faster than any PCI-Express 8 port or 16 port card. PCI shares bandwidth across ALL DEVICES, only has 133 MB/s total available, while a single lane PCI-Express card has 250 MB/s in each direction (input and output) and does not share bandwidth with other devices. The 4-lane (4x) PCI-Express slot has 1000 MB/s of bandwidth available.

 

You must mean PCI-Express. PCI is not PCI-Express. It is an important difference.

Yes, I have had PCI cards and they were slow as hell and that's why I am changing to PCI-E.

 

I was just thinking that how much of a job is it to add a driver for the HighPoint RocketRAID 2340? I think it would be a good deal for users in the future. Cheap card with a support for 16 sata drives.

I wouldn't call that $500 card cheap. 

Well no, but if you compare to other 16 port cards and you have only 1 pci-e slot, this is the card you'll want to have?

I still don't know.

 

This card here LSI SAS 9201-16i Host Bus Adapter Card looks a bit more interesting possibly for $400. It's 6G SATA ports and uses PCI-Express Generation 2 so it provides 4000 MB/s bandwidth when used in an 8 lane slot. It uses the mpt2sas drivers which have been included in Linux for some time now.

 

Unfortunately the CONFIG_SCSI_MPT2SAS drivers are not part of the default Unraid distros.

 

Well no, but if you compare to other 16 port cards and you have only 1 pci-e slot, this is the card you'll want to have?

Sure, but what's the point? You can buy two of the Supermicros for less than half of the price. Hell, if your motherboard only had one PCI-E slot, you could buy a new motherboard with two slots and still be way cheaper. Given that unRAID only supports twenty drives, I don't see this card being supported any time soon.

But doesn't those Supermicro cards need the forward cables to be bought seperately or are they included?

 

They cost around $35 a piece. 4 times 35 = $140. If you add $200 for 2 Supermicro cards and a new mobo, you'll be around $400?

All those cards need forward cables. It seems yours are included.

 

Though they're not that expensive if you find a good deal on them, around $17 a piece shipped. So that's $68.

 

(2 * $100) + (4 * $17) + $100 ~= $368 for 2 Cards + Cables + MB.

 

Even with that, the RocketRaid card isn't as interesting as the card I linked.

Now got two Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards and works like ok.

 

Thanks!