WTD: 2-4 port PCI-e SATA port extender

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Forums › Offers and Wanted › WTD: 2-4 port PCI-e SATA port extender

kiwibum

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#290247 29-Oct-2021 14:41

Looking for 2-4 port PCI-e SATA extender to add more SATA ports to my motherboard. Doesn't need RAID, I'm just looking to use them as stand alone disks, SATA-I or SATA-II fine. My drives are only SATA-II so thought I would check here first in case someone has upgraded to SATA-III and want to sell their old card before buying new.

I'm based in Tauranga, happy to pay postage.

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Ultimate Geek

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#2803738 29-Oct-2021 14:46

I’m in Tauranga too and pretty sure I have one.
I’ll check in an hour or so and let you know.

••• edit - actually I think I only have pci not pci-e.. would that matter?

Sons Rig: Asus TUF Gaming X-570, Ryzen 9 3900X, G.Skill neo 2x16Gb 3600's, Sabrent Rocket 1Tb M.2, Win10 Pro, Phanteks case, EVGA G5 850W.

NAS: DS1819+ - 52Tb in Raid6

My rig: HP Elitebook X360 Lappy with a 2Tb SN850.. woohoo.. I've retired!

Heat under fritzman (152-0-0)

olivernz

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#2803746 29-Oct-2021 15:14

Depending on OS and usage I suggest using a SAS 2008 controller that is in SATA only BIOS.

kiwibum

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#2803750 29-Oct-2021 15:29

olivernz:

Depending on OS and usage I suggest using a SAS 2008 controller that is in SATA only BIOS.

Thanks I'll keep that in mind. I'm using Linux. It's just for file server and computer in garage/workshop. Have decided to combine the two rather than having them separate since it will use half the power.

kiwibum

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#2803753 29-Oct-2021 15:33

I have one PCI slot so that is a possibility, I assumed PCI-e would be more common now. The SATA cards I have are PCI-X but the new to me motherboard only has 1 PCI and 3 PCI-e slots. PM me directly if you find anything. thanks.

fritzman: I’m in Tauranga too and pretty sure I have one.
I’ll check in an hour or so and let you know.

••• edit - actually I think I only have pci not pci-e.. would that matter?

fritzman

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#2803754 29-Oct-2021 15:37

Sent you a PM already.

Sons Rig: Asus TUF Gaming X-570, Ryzen 9 3900X, G.Skill neo 2x16Gb 3600's, Sabrent Rocket 1Tb M.2, Win10 Pro, Phanteks case, EVGA G5 850W.

NAS: DS1819+ - 52Tb in Raid6

My rig: HP Elitebook X360 Lappy with a 2Tb SN850.. woohoo.. I've retired!

Heat under fritzman (152-0-0)

kiwibum

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#2804066 30-Oct-2021 09:59

Still looking. I only have one PCI slot so I'm going to stick with PCI-express card.

I guess it is a good thing there aren't a lot of unused PCI-express SATA cards laying round.

toejam316

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#2804122 30-Oct-2021 10:20

I'd suggest buying an IBM LSI card off ebay, flashing the bios with a SATA mode driver and then using a cable. That's exactly what I've got setup in my unraid server. I personally grabbed https://www.ebay.com/itm/142391817314 and then flashed it with the IT Mode firmware (available with a little googlefu). You'll also need a cable for it, like https://www.ebay.com/itm/252100825196. It'll do up to 8 drives.

Anything I say is the ramblings of an ill informed, opinionated so-and-so, and not representative of any of my past, present or future employers, and is also probably best disregarded.

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richms

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#2804130 30-Oct-2021 10:50

I have tried so many PCIe cards to find one that was reliable, and they have all had errors that have taken storage spaces offline either within hours or weeks, other than using a SAS HBA card, which has been rock solid reliable. If you want to pick up from beach haven I can dig out some of the ones that I had issues with but I am not interested in posting them at the moment.

Richard rich.ms

kiwibum

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#2804209 30-Oct-2021 11:58

Thanks I have seen this recommended on NAS forums too. I have a lead on a suitable card. However my motherboard only has one real 16X slot, taken up by the display card, and these SAS/HBA cards all appear to need 8 lanes. The other large PCIe slot on the board is a x16 wired at x4, so I have the quandary of giving up quality display for quality disk access going this route.

toejam316:

I'd suggest buying an IBM LSI card off ebay, flashing the bios with a SATA mode driver and then using a cable. That's exactly what I've got setup in my unraid server. I personally grabbed https://www.ebay.com/itm/142391817314 and then flashed it with the IT Mode firmware (available with a little googlefu). You'll also need a cable for it, like https://www.ebay.com/itm/252100825196. It'll do up to 8 drives.

kiwibum

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#2804214 30-Oct-2021 12:07

This has been a concern of mine, which is why I asked on here in hope of finding something reliable. Are you willing to share names/models of cards that didn't work. Any idea if the StarTech line are any good?

richms:

I have tried so many PCIe cards to find one that was reliable, and they have all had errors that have taken storage spaces offline either within hours or weeks, other than using a SAS HBA card, which has been rock solid reliable. If you want to pick up from beach haven I can dig out some of the ones that I had issues with but I am not interested in posting them at the moment.

richms

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#2804239 30-Oct-2021 13:27

Reviewing my purchase history of cards and...

Marvell 88SE9230 was a total bust, the 88SE9215 wasnt that different. (I cant recall the differences other than they didnt last in the machine long)

Would go for a long time fine with minimal disk access on a JMS585 but sustained simultaneous writing to a storage space on it would cause it to drop off with write errors. weeks to months were fine seeding off it, but downloading direclty to it in deluge and it would go offline before a single bluray rip was downloaded.

I got an IOCRest branded one - 8 ports - cant recall the chipset but it was a 4 port chip with a port multiplier hiding under the heatsink - atrocious performance on any drives on the multiplier because when its waiting on one to do anything the others all seem to have to wait.

I have also tried a couple of orico external cases that take 5 drives and are USB 3 to the computer, they also constantly had the space go offline for write errors.

The dell/LSI card has been faultless and I think it is a 4x card anyway, so shouldnt see any bottleneck in the slot that only has 4 lanes, and really if you have a handful of spinning rust on the card anyway, thats not likly to bottleneck it even down to 1 or 2 lanes should still be acceptable speeds.

Richard rich.ms

kiwibum

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#2804522 30-Oct-2021 23:51

Thank you, that is really useful. What is the Dell/LSI card model you are using? Having another look I see there are some HP LSI SAS3041E cards that are x4 slot units with 4 SATA ports that would be fine for what I need. Thanks again for everyone's helpful replies.

richms:

Reviewing my purchase history of cards and...

Marvell 88SE9230 was a total bust, the 88SE9215 wasnt that different. (I cant recall the differences other than they didnt last in the machine long)

Would go for a long time fine with minimal disk access on a JMS585 but sustained simultaneous writing to a storage space on it would cause it to drop off with write errors. weeks to months were fine seeding off it, but downloading direclty to it in deluge and it would go offline before a single bluray rip was downloaded.

I got an IOCRest branded one - 8 ports - cant recall the chipset but it was a 4 port chip with a port multiplier hiding under the heatsink - atrocious performance on any drives on the multiplier because when its waiting on one to do anything the others all seem to have to wait.

I have also tried a couple of orico external cases that take 5 drives and are USB 3 to the computer, they also constantly had the space go offline for write errors.

The dell/LSI card has been faultless and I think it is a 4x card anyway, so shouldnt see any bottleneck in the slot that only has 4 lanes, and really if you have a handful of spinning rust on the card anyway, thats not likly to bottleneck it even down to 1 or 2 lanes should still be acceptable speeds.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#2804524 31-Oct-2021 00:39

If you're only attaching mechanical disks to it, it's unlikely that 4x PCIe lanes will be much of an issue. PCIe 2.0x4 is 2GB/s each way. PCIe 3.0x4 is 4GB/s each way. The fastest (largest) spinning drives will just hit 250MB/s each, so 8x would just max out the PCIe 2.0x4. Those limits are only really an issue if you start hooking up SSDs to them and using the onboard RAID cache.

Rough lineup of LSI card generations:

LSI 1064/1068/1078 - PCIe 1.0, SAS 1 (3Gb/s). Avoid as these have issues with >2TB drives. Also cannot recognise 4Kn drives but that's unlikely to be an issue.

LSI SAS2008 - PCIe 2.0, SAS 2 (6Gb/s). Very popular. Can be used either as entry level RAID or in "IT mode" to simply pass through the drives. Still cannot see 4Kn drives, but almost all drives are 512e, with older ones 512N.

LSI SAS2108 - PCIe 2.0, SAS 2 (6Gb/s). RAID card only. You cannot make each drive show up to the OS on its own, except by making 1-disk RAID-0 arrays. Avoid if you want to use ZFS etc. Still cannot see 4Kn drives.

LSI SAS2208 - PCIe 3.0, SAS 2 (6Gb/s). Still a RAID card, but can now be flashed to be a 2308, and might work with JBOD and RAID simultaneously. Faster than above cards. Supports 4Kn drives.

LSI SAS2308 - PCIe 3.0, SAS 2 (6Gb/s). Primarily intended for use as an HBA/IT mode. Can do some RAID modes but not with great performance. Supports 4Kn drives. Stripped down version of 2208.

LSI SAS3xxx - PCIe 3.0, SAS 3 (12Gb/s). Fast but expensive.

I have an Intel RS2BL080 you can probably have if you want it - it's a SAS2108 card so see above caveats. You'll need to get a (pair of for 8x lanes) SFF-8087 (quad mini-SAS) to 4x SATA breakout cables. It would need to manage the RAID array. Advantage is that your CPU doesn't have to do parity work and the PCIe bus only has to carry the actual data, not the data plus parity or mirrors.

richms

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#2804597 31-Oct-2021 11:19

kiwibum:

Thank you, that is really useful. What is the Dell/LSI card model you are using? Having another look I see there are some HP LSI SAS3041E cards that are x4 slot units with 4 SATA ports that would be fine for what I need. Thanks again for everyone's helpful replies.

I am using dell H200 cards - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000064416741.html is where I got my backup one and one for a friend doing the same thing from.

Its older and slower than some other options but it works great, didn't even need to reflash it, I think the seller may have done that already or else the firmware just worked with sata drives showing straight to the OS.

I got the external connector one because I had a nice external sas expander case that took 16 drives until its controller in it crapped the bed. Since I now have a breakout cable I just have it going back into the case thru an open PCIe hole to get to the internal drives.

Richard rich.ms

kiwibum

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#2804719 31-Oct-2021 15:49

Thank you again for the really useful replies and information sharing.

SomeoneSomewhere: Thank you for the run down on the lineup of cards/chipsets used. I found this information on LSI cards after reading your post: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/lsi-raid-controller-and-hba-complete-listing-plus-oem-models.599/

Thank you for the offer of the SAS2108 card, I wasn't really looking for a RAID card and was aiming to avoid hardware RAID this time round. I'm still working through what I really need.

My last setup was using LSI 9500s in RAID 10. I've come to the realisation I don't really need that setup for a home file server. It was 10 years ago I set that up, used it for 18 months, then we moved, and because we haven't worried a multimedia system or storage, it wasn't unpacked until a couple of weeks ago.

I built a OpenMediaVault NAS out of the old system to use the drives for storage, however I also worked out how much power that used. I've been given a motherboard with an I7 2gn CPU and found that uses much less power than the old system and makes a useable garage computer too, hence the aim to move the drives to this new motherboard. That's when enough SATA ports became a problem and finding a suitable PCIe card.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't need fast access speeds (I don't game or do anything like video editing), I'm only connecting 4 drives (and really only need two of them) and I'm get the feeling simplicity of single access over hardware RAID would be better for me. Realistically for my storage requirements, I could just buy one new drive and replace the 4 I have, however I hate throwing stuff away that I can reuse and they are server grade drives with little use.

richms: Thank you for the link and information on the card you use.

I've learnt a lot from this exercise, I haven't had anything to do with PCI express cards other than plugging in video units up to now. I incorrectly assumed x8 cards wouldn't work in x4 slots. I've since read that a x8 card will also work fine in a x4 slot but it will be limited to x4 speeds. Each step of this process has been a lot of reading to get things right, always open to others input.

Thanks again.

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