I'm new to Unraid and the server space in general, so apologies if these are basic questions lol. I currently have a pretty small server setup (only using for Plex storage/transcoding and Minecraft server hosting at the moment), I initially built it just to get a feel for how it all worked so I wasn't really planning for a ton of drives, but I'm looking for a way to just give myself the ability to expand in the future. Here's my current build:

 

Unraid Ver: 6.8.2

Mobo: Asus Prime B450M-A

CPU: Ryzen 7 1800X

RAM: G.Skill 16gb (2x8) 3200Mhz

SATA: 1x8tb Ironwolf (parity), 2x8tb Ironwolf (storage), 1 Asus BD drive

M.2: 1tb Intel 660p (cache)

 

I'm at the limit of my mobo SATA ports since 2 get disabled if I'm using an M.2, so I was wondering if it would be possible to remove the 3 HDDs that I have, add in something like the LSI 9207-8i, and reconnect my drives to that. Would it mess with the way Unraid reads the drives if I've already configured shares and started using them if I add in an HBA after the fact, or is this fine to do? I'm looking to add a 4th HDD soon, so I'm just trying to figure out the best way get everything set up so that I can do that and also have room for a few more drives in the future. I personally can't see myself needing more than 8 drives anytime in the foreseeable future so I figured the 9207-8i would be a decent option, I'm just wondering if something like this would be plug and play or if it would take a lot of reconfiguring to get it to work. Appreciate any guidance or assistance on the subject, thanks!

9207 is plug'n play, devices are tracked by serial number, not where they are connected, just don't use RAID controllers.

Sweet, that's kinda what I figured but I just wanted to be sure. Thanks for the tip!