UnRAID issues. Advice needed for upgrade...

[mfilos]

Hi all,

 

I'm using UnRAID for many years with no issues as I needed a system for my father's video repository that grew larger by the day.

As budget was always an issue, we always added storage with various ways, and atm the array consists of 28x storage drives and 2x parity drives with a total ~110TB.

The motheboard we use is an Asrock Z97 Anniversary (with a Pentium Anniversary CPU) and 32GB of RAM.

- 6x Hard drives are hooked on the motherboard (2x Parity, 4x Storage)

- 8x Hard drives (storage) are hooked on an SATA Raid controller in HBA mode (Highpoint RocketRAID 2720)

- 16x Hard drives (storage) are hooked on 2x external Sharkoon 8-bay raidstation in CLEAN mode and mounted via eSata to a PCI eSata controller with Multiplier support.

We always knew this was not the ideal setup, but it served him well as he doesn't have extreme demands than storage space where speed isn't a issue.

System was working awesomelly well until he decided to perform some upgrades, and then some problems occurred with sync issues.

 

Atm, we're having some issues with 1 of the external 8-bay raidstations that possibly looses connection. I downgraded the installation (after backing up the USB stick) to an earlier version (6.6.7) but didn't see much improvement (at least some parity sync with a problematic disk occurred successfully so at least array is in working state.

As these problems with that external enclosure still exist I don't wanna risk it, alas I was thinking of removing all controllers and putting possibly a recommended controller (from wiki) LSI SAS 9305-24i that will host 24x drives plus the 6x that I can use from the motherboard's controller.

 

In the past I tried to change the Highpoint RocketRAID 2720 with an LSI SAS 9201-8i without a single issue so the questions that arise are the following:

1. If I remove all controllers and put a new one with 24x ports (like LSI SAS 9305-24i) and mount all disks to it would suffice? Is there a possibility UnRAID won't recognize some of the disks (like the ones from the external 8-bay enclosures)?

2. Even if everything works as intended, has any of you had any luck of finding a case that could support 30x internal hard drives or a case with 18x 5.25 bays? I would like to avoid rack cases due to budget but some cases that could meet the criteria are EOL or nowhere to be found :(

 

Thanks a lot for your time!