Cheapest way to add 12, 16, or 20 drives?


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I know there's a lot of posts about choosing HBAs and expanders, so maybe this will help others as well that are googling trying to figure this out...

 

What is the current cheapest way to add support for an additional _____ drives with zero bottlenecks?

  • 20 HDDs?
  • 16 HDDs?
  • 12 HDDs?

 

Assumptions:

  • One PCI-E 4.0 x16 slot available
  • Almost useless two PCIe 2.0 x1 slots available
  • The extra drives will be housed in a separate spare tower case
  • Only HHDs will be connected to the HBA(s) / Expander(s) - SSDs will be direct to motherboard SATA

 

Background:

  • My main box right now holds 20 drives total and I have no space left (16 data, 2 parity, 2 cache)
  • I want to support the max that unRAID is capable of (28 data, 2 parity, at least 2 cache, a couple spare slots for unassigned devices) 
  • I currently use my onboard SATA (8 drives) along with an 9207-8i + RES2SV240NC in dual link (12 drives)
  • The motherboard I am using is an ASRock x570 Creator and the 9207-8i is currently in a PCI-E 4.0 x16 slot
  • The minimum I would need to be able to support is 12 additional drives, but ideally I would like to be able to support 16 or even 20 if its not cost prohibitive

 

Any recommendations are appreciated.

Edited by johnsanc
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Cost really depends on the price which you got for the hardware. I have build a 13bay external enclosure, it cost ~280USD which little bit higher then buy a 12bay 2U rack case. But I want direct plugin disk, so DIY this 3rd enclosure.

 

Expander are Adaptec AEC-82885T ( Intel RES3FV288 )

 

 

Edited by Vr2Io
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Yes I should have clarified - I am only interested in the HBA / Expander.

 

My current setup is an Antec 1200 with 4x 3x5 drive cages and it works beautifully. It wasn't the most cost effective storage solution for a lot of drives but it was able to grow with my array over the years. And frankly it just looks way better than a rack IMO. My goal is to create another matching tower just for the extra drives using the same drive cages I use for my main enclosure.

 

The problem is that I only have 1 PCE 4.0 x16 slot available to use. So here's what I've deduced so far:

  • 12 drives = 9207-8e + RES2SV240 (dual link, basically mirroring what I have now internally. Single link may also work with very little bottleneck)
  • 16 drives = not sure
  • 20 drives = not sure

 

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@JorgeB - Thanks so much for that link. I've read that post but after re-reading it carefully and checking I see now that my 9207-8i + RES2SV240 is actually capable of supporting 16 drives at 275 MB/s

 

For some reason I had these diagrams and their associated speeds stuck in my head which are the LSI 2008 chipset:

 

So that being said it looks like some potential options are:

  • 12 drives
    • Change my current setup to single link for my 12 drives in my main enclosure using my existing 9207-8i + RES2SV240
    • Route a SAS cable to my other enclosure
    • Add another RES2SV240 for another 12 drives using single link
    • This should maybe result in a slight bottleneck, but still very acceptable speeds without needing an extra HBA
  • 16 drives
    • Add a 9207-8e + RES2SV240 in dual link for 275 MB/s for the additional 16 drives
  • 20 drives
    • Add a 9207-8e + RES2SV240 in dual link for 275 MB/s for the 16 drives
    • Route a cable from the internal expander out to the new enclosure for the additional 4 drives (since I'm only using 12 currently with a dual link setup)

So it sounds like just getting a new HBA / Expander pair would be a good way to go if I didn't want to sacrifice any potential speed from my current setup. 

Edited by johnsanc
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