I can't believe this didn't occur to me earlier but with the Norco chassis you are essentially reduced to using motherboard ports in multiples of 4.  In my case the 6 ports on my X8SIL-F can't be used because as far as I know there are only reverse breakout cables (of 4) and 8087 to 8087 cables. 

 

What are others doing in this case?  Converting to esata or using the internal 2.5" drive bays?  I had always assumed 30 drives (3 SASLP-MV8 cards + 6 onboard) but had mistakenly assumed that all 6 could be used by the hot swap ports.

 

I'm embarrased and should have my geek card revoked! 

Do the reverse break-out cables need to be fully populated to work? I know on the forward ones, if it's not populated it just gets ignored. I would assume it's the same way on the reverse cables. So you could have three break-out cables for the six ports, with two cables left dangling. I think it's a non-issue for most, because of the mathematics of the situation:

 

4220 = 20 bays

2x LV8 = 16 ports

Motherboard = 4 ports

 

4224 = 24 bays

3x LV8 = 24 ports

Or 2x LV8 plus six ports (2 break-out ports unpopulated) = 22 ports

(moot point since unRAID currently only supports 22 total)

Oh it's definitely a moot point in the end.  The reverse breakout cables don't need to be fully populated but as each 4 drive backplane grouping comes off a single 8087 connection only one backplane can connect to the onboard SATA and the others have to go to a add-in card.

 

 

well i am guessing that you could connect 2 (out of 4) SATA cables on the 2 spare Mobo SATA ports and the rest 2 on a 2-port SATA card.

Wouldn't that work?

That's what I mean about being mathematically moot. You don't really need to do that, because two SAS-LP cards = 16 ports, so you only have four ports left over. If you only had one, then it would be 8 ports, and then your 6 mobo ports would only be 14. Even with two more, it would be 16. So you either end up with two extra mobo ports, or you're short a minimum of four.

You can part populate a SAS breakout cable.

 

I have a mobo with 6 SATA ports, 4 go to one backplane.

 

I have the 2 other ports plugged into a breakout cable and into the SAS backplane. It picks up the 2 drives. I don't know if the sata cables are numbered a certain way to match the drives in the SAS backplane but I connected the 2 SATA ports into the 2 middle SAS breakout cable and into the 2 middle drives in the SAS backplane and it all works.

 

I'm waiting on my supermicro SASLP which will run another 8 drives.

 

I think I'll get a 2 port PCIe card and connect that up with the half used SAS.

 

One more supermicro card and that will fully populate a 4224 even though unraid won't support that many hdds.

 

Hope that helps,

 

Josh

 

 

If you are using the 4220, you could use the last two motherboard ports for the two 2.5" drive mounts on top.  Otherwise, I would just ignore them.