Cheap many port PCI_E Sata cards

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richms

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#133625 28-Oct-2013 16:05

In order to retire my last XP and server 2003 boxes, I need to move all the storage to something more modern.

So thats about 9 more drives in my current server machine. Problem is it only has 6 onboard satas which are already all in use, and I can only find non-raid PCIe cards in 2 port versions. There were plenty of 4 port ones in the old days of PCI, and that is what I have in the stink old computer but I need PCIe for the new one.

Not interested in a card that does its own raid etc.

Is anyone aware of anything affordable that has 4 or more ports on it, and fits into the small 1x PCIe slot?

Richard rich.ms

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#923089 28-Oct-2013 16:08

What do you define as affordable?

For that number of drives something like an IBM M1015 (about $110NZD off eBay) would be ideal, flash it to IT mode (remove the RAID functionality). Would need a PCI 8x slot though.

Lias

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#923091 28-Oct-2013 16:17

Most if not all of the cheap 4port raid cards can be run in JBOD mode as "dumb" controllers.

I'm running several of the STLab cards like that.

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richms

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#923094 28-Oct-2013 16:24

Lias: Most if not all of the cheap 4port raid cards can be run in JBOD mode as "dumb" controllers.

I'm running several of the STLab cards like that.

What model is it? Its not one of those stupid 4 port ones where there are 2 internal and 2 external and you have jumpers to choose which is connected is it? 4 true independant ports?

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#923105 28-Oct-2013 16:56

There are some raid cards that can be used for straight through

richms

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#923106 28-Oct-2013 16:59

I've found this which I will youshop if nothing comes up locally. Hate the crap selection of stuff in NZ.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AZ9T3OU/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00AZ9T3OU&linkCode=as2&tag=richmscom-20

Raid cards have given me grief before, with a drive used elsewhere not wanting to work on it till it was messed with adding it to a set and other things, I know that setting to JBOD should make that not happen, but if I can get a more braindead card that will reduce the chances of that happening. Would prefer it without a bios even since on the last computer I had to remove the bios chip to get the thing to even boot since the onboard bios freaked out with too many drives available for the boot order.

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#923179 28-Oct-2013 19:14

richms:
Lias: Most if not all of the cheap 4port raid cards can be run in JBOD mode as "dumb" controllers.

I'm running several of the STLab cards like that.

What model is it? Its not one of those stupid 4 port ones where there are 2 internal and 2 external and you have jumpers to choose which is connected is it? 4 true independant ports?

http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p=ADPSTL13110&name=STLab-A-224-4-Channel-Serial-ATA-RAID-PCI-Card-6-P
http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p=ADPSTL23244&name=STLab-A-520-PCIe-SATA-6G-Raid-Card-4-Channel-(-4x-

They have 4 internal and 2 external, and you cant use the externals if you use all 4 internals, but I pretty much never use E-Sata (and already have other E-Sata ports anyways) so its never been an issue for me. JUst run 4 internal drives off them.

The cheaper one is PCi, the pricier is PCI-E x1

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#923188 28-Oct-2013 19:28

The second one is a PCIe x2 card - not gonna fit in a x1 slot unfortunatly :( Many cards like that on ebay etc too.

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#938237 20-Nov-2013 21:54

I was looking into this last weekend for my 24 drive build.

Aliexpress sell 4 and 8 port pci-x cards for less than $9 per port.

I know that it is fashionable to slag them off but I am currently using a couple of 4 port PCI cards from there on a ZFS file server that has a total of 12 drives in the zfs pool under freebsd. They work a treat. I plan on buying two of the 8 ports cards for my big server.

richms

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#938239 20-Nov-2013 21:55

pci-e or pci-x?

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#938248 20-Nov-2013 22:08

can you get fewer, bigger drives for your current server?

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richms

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#938256 20-Nov-2013 22:35

The current servers are a windows XP machine and a server 2003 machine, they are all 2TB drives since that is all that XP will deal with, and I want to put fewer drives in the new machine, so will probably look at 5 3TB's eventually and raid-5 it as I have someone willing to give me a server 2008 key, but I still need to get these drives running on something that isnt so slow that it makes me get quite annoyed at it.

Plus I dont want to have the new machine full from the start.

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sidefx

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#938263 20-Nov-2013 23:05

Is the x1 slot the only free pcie slot in your server?

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driller2000

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#938282 21-Nov-2013 06:26

i have 2 of these in use in my unRraid server - they work a treat

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&cs_id=1040702&p_id=2667&seq=1&format=2

edit: i mistakenly listed the 2 not 4 port....

jpoc

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#938333 21-Nov-2013 09:12

driller2000: i have 2 of these in use in my unRraid server - they work a treat

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&cs_id=1040702&p_id=2667&seq=1&format=2

edit: i mistakenly listed the 2 not 4 port....

Those are PCI cards, it appears that the OP is looking for PCI Express cards. (Given that he reports that he has an X1 slot.)

Also, those are Sata 1 only so they are slower and do not have NCQ.

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#938335 21-Nov-2013 09:17

sidefx: Is the x1 slot the only free pcie slot in your server?

Sometimes it is possible to get away with plugging an X2 card into an X1 slot.

Most PCIx cards can negotiate for a number of channels that is lower than the physical slot size.

You probably cannot physically plug an X2 card into an X1 slot but you could try using one of the X1-X16 riser cables that the scrypt coin miners go for when they want to plug their stack of Radeons into X1 slots.

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