AOC-SASLP-MV8 card questions and performance


kizer

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I've recently purchased a AOC-SASLP-MV8 card with the cables to hook up 8 additional drives. I'm not really ready for the card nor the cables, but I wanted to have everything on hand when/if I need them because I'm kinda like that. Prepaired I guess.

 

Anyways one question I have is there going to be a change in performance because I'm not using the onboard Sata connections vs a card? My system is listed in my signature just in case anybody wonders and says it all depends on your setup.

 

What I'm trying to get down to is, should I hang my newer drives off the expansion card or put my older drives on the expansion card or is there no advantages either way? The reason I ask is my older drives are obviously are only going to be really used to read opposed to write, but if there is no real benifit either way then I'll just stop worrying about things and keep on moving the way I'm moving. ;)

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One thing I never asked is it as simple as plugging in the card and hanging your drives off of it or is there something else I need to look at?

 

I have 1 out of 6 empty Sata connection still open do I need to fill that first or does it really make a difference. I'm going to say it doesn't make a difference, but figured might as well ask anyways. ;)

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Thanks guys. I just tried it at lunch. Shutdown, inserted card with one patch cable, connected drive to P0 and it fired right up.

 

Kinda cool knowing I have enough for 8more drives. I just now have to find a IDE to SATA patch cable with a bunch of leads on it. Monoprice.com here I come.

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I do not believe you can update firmware with disks plugged into an addin card. If I remember right it has to be either on sata0 or sata1 port. May even have to be in IDE mode. I think it tells you to disconnect all other drives but I didn't and had no problems.

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Can the firmware be upgraded on them while in an unRaid server or do you have to do it in a different box?

 

You have to update the firmware from a DOS boot disk so you can unplug the unRAID flash (when off obviously), plug in a DOS boot disk and flash.

See My post for downgrading, upgrading the firmware should be the same.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9488.msg91984#msg91984

I unplugged the SAS cables from mine, but that was just to be on the safe side.

 

Does the firmware need to be updated from what it shipped with? I only tested one drive to make sure it worked and I didn't have a connection problem. Until I'm ready I'm sure mine will sit in its silver wrapper and nice pretty white box.

I'm running mine with the .15 firmware and it runs fine so far so you don't need to upgrade but there are a few changes to the firmware as listed in the above post. The .21 firmware was noted to be larger than the .15 firmware so was causing my mobo combo to freeze on bootup as there wasn't enough option ROM.

 

Josh

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I do not believe unRAID supports hot insert/swap/removal, so a reboot is always needed regardless of the HBA/adapter used.

correct.

 

I was thinking about this. Unraid aside, Linux should support hot OIR of a harddrive. I can understand about not supporting swapping a drive that is active in an array, but I would think that I should be able to add a disk, to the system not to the array, without a reboot.

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