July 4, 20206 yr My main unraid server is currently a Fractal Design Node 804. Just thinking, I have this model lying around. It's called HP Microserver N40L, with an AMD Turion processor. I can't recall how many GB I have on my memory. Behind those 3.5" bays, I assume there is a backplane, with cable such as this. I want to add 4 more sata drives. I'm thinking what if I placed an IcyDock ExpressCage. And use an HBA controller that accepts 2 internal SFF-8087 and at the back, have an SFF-8088 port, and plug it onto my Fractal as additional drives, will this work? Currently, the HDDs from the bays are currently connected to the SAS port on the motherboard. I believe I can plug it to the additional HBA controller I'm gonna connect? The HBA controller gets power from the PCI-e slot from the motherboard? I believe it is PCI-e Gen 2, x16 slot. Which card can you recommend? Thanks
July 4, 20206 yr 47 minutes ago, jang430 said: I assume there is a backplane, with cable such as this. IIRC the cable on the HP can't be replaced with one of those, the SATA part is part the the backplane.
July 4, 20206 yr Author If it cannot be replaced, the current cable terminates in SFF-8087. I can just unplug it, and connect it to an HBA controller, and not plug it to the onboard one. Sorry, what's IIRC?
July 4, 20206 yr 5 hours ago, jang430 said: I can just unplug it, and connect it to an HBA controller, and not plug it to the onboard one. That you can do, it uses a standard SFF-8087 connection.
July 5, 20206 yr FYI, you can squeeze another 2 drives (total of 6) on the microserver with a custom bios and using the CD-ROM drive sata port and esata port. Note: you'll be stretching the friendship with the stock PSU
July 5, 20206 yr Author Actually, I'm proposing to squeeze 4 2.5" SATA HDDs to the existing 4 3.5" SATA HDDS Are you saying we won't get along? Add to that an HBA controller I'm asking here.
July 5, 20206 yr 6 hours ago, jang430 said: Any controller you can recommend? Any LSI with a SAS2008/2308/3008/3408 chipset in IT mode, e.g., 9201-8i, 9211-8i, 9207-8i, 9300-8i, 9400-8i, etc and clones, like the Dell H200/H310 and IBM M1015, these latter ones need to be crossflashed.
July 5, 20206 yr Author Any card that has both internal and external ports? At least 8 ports internal
July 5, 20206 yr 4 minutes ago, jang430 said: Any card that has both internal and external ports? At least 8 ports internal Not very common, you have the 9400-8i8e but it's usually pretty expensive.
July 5, 20206 yr Author I see. So I guess this project will ge hold off for now. Thanks @johnnie.black
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