SATA Port Multiplier

Forums › Desktop computing › SATA Port Multiplier

martin308

226 posts

Master Geek

#40884 6-Sep-2009 17:11

Hi all,

I am looking at building myself a fairly decent file store/NAS, and im trying to find some place in NZ that sells SATA port multiplier back planes. Has anyone seen them around for a reasonable price? Cheers

boby55

1539 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#253573 6-Sep-2009 17:26

I didn't think you could run more than one Drive off a single SATA port.

martin308

226 posts

Master Geek

#253692 7-Sep-2009 10:46

Neither did I.

I was reading this article, which mentions them:

Petabytes on a budget

and then found some more info on them in this wikipedia article:

wikipedia port multiplier

sbiddle

30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#253694 7-Sep-2009 10:54

A quick Google search shows quite a few places selling gear in NZ.

This here is probably the best price http://www.pcssl.co.nz/productdetails.aspx?cmd=526-83

or this if you want an internal solution http://www.pcssl.co.nz/productdetails.aspx?cmd=740-93%22

Only downside with this is you need a chipset with PM support to use it.

humvee

196 posts

Master Geek

#253722 7-Sep-2009 12:35

Addonics make a lot of that kind of thing
http://www.addonics.com/
And I know Acquire - www.acquire.co.nz sell/list quite a bit of their stuff and and probally get access to the rest

martin308

226 posts

Master Geek

#254007 8-Sep-2009 10:44

Cool cheers for the links guys.

Has anyone used these before? Or know how widespread the support is for port multipliers in chipsets are?

Ragnor

8223 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#254020 8-Sep-2009 11:14

Interesting, I wonder how a single port multiplier compares performance-wise against a standard PCI or PCI-E sata raid card.

Also those BackBlaze storage pods look awesome.

humvee

196 posts

Master Geek

#254033 8-Sep-2009 11:56

martin308: Cool cheers for the links guys.

Has anyone used these before? Or know how widespread the support is for port multipliers in chipsets are?

I'm not really sure, I really only found out about/started looking into them about 2 weeks ago. I would imagine there must be some speed loss though ie 3gbps shared rather then per drive

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

martin308

226 posts

Master Geek

#254034 8-Sep-2009 11:57

Yeh good point, the only thing I have read about performance is that all drives on the port multiplier obviously share the one sata channel, so performance for all drives on it would be no greater than 150MB/s/300MB/s. (not sure if they work over SATAII)

richms

28192 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#255489 14-Sep-2009 02:55

I tried one for a while - it came in a 4 bay external sata enclosure.

I guess if the 4 drives were in a raid it would work ok, but I was using them as 4 seperate drives.

If I was copying for example a 20 gig rip from the system drive to one of the 1tb drives, playback of music off another would skip badly.

In the end pulled the multiplier out, got 4 sata to esata cables and another PCI-e dual port sata card - now it works fine.

Richard rich.ms