Are LSI 9240-8i & 9211-8i still relevant and good?

Hi all,

I have 18HDs of varying size (2TB, 1.5TB, 1TB) in my workstation plus 6 more like those that are used for backup of critical data but I keep them offline.

My system is quite old (Asus P5Q3 DELUXE, Q9550 @ 3.4Ghz, 8GB DDR3 1600, Samsung 840pro SSD) but still performs quite nicely form most of the tasks I use it for. For connecting all those HDs I am using on-board SATA and 3 controllers wth SI chips (2x3114 a bricked PCIe 3132??).

I accidentally flashed the wrong BIOS to the 3132 so it is bricked and now I need an extra controller and it would be nice to get one that replaces all of them.

A full system upgrade is planned to an I7 platform as soon as I gather the funds but for now I can only buy a budget controller.

After doing a search my choices came down to those:

DELL PERC6i (no support for >2TB drives so rejected it)

LSI 9240-8i
LSI 9211-8i

I have no need for RAID5 or 6 and cover my redundancy needs through backing up frequently (PC Images and filesync) to external drives.

What I do need is to be able to keep adding HDs (larger than 2TB too) and be able to use a SAS expander in the future.
When I get the new system I will turn the current one to a storage Server / NAS.

So are those two LSI boards good choices? If so which one should I get?

Finally, I have found those two at very good prices on ebay, are they China fakes? Should I be better off ordering an IBM 1015 and flash it to an LSI board?

I am sorry for the many questions but any help would be greatly appreciated and will save me a lot of time and trouble.

Are you going to use Raid 1? or just straight using all the drives as individual?

I am not going to use RAID1 straight away but I would like to keep the option open for certain datasets in order to avoid daily or day by day File Synchronization (using Filesync utility or Synctoy).

I'd say go with the 9211-8i with IR firmware then. If you are never going to go beyond R1 then no point having the extra raid firmware/model and the 9211's are awesome (I have multiple).

If I ever decide to go with RAID6 this means I need to change all my HDs to appropriate drives for such use ($$$$) and I would go for at least an LSI 9260-8i or a higher end LSI/Areca.

For now shifting from the onboard SATA ports and the cheap Silicon Image controllers to the LSI 9211-8i will probably be a nice upgrade especially when doing 200-300GB copy transfer between HDs.

Going for the 9211-8i then.

Thanks for the feedback.

Oops one more question if your please.\

I guess I need some cables for this card too so do I buy Mini SAS-to-SATA SFF-8087 36pin to 7pin SATA Fanout cables (4x Sata each)?

Are those the correct ones for this card?

yea, those are the right cables.


As a side note, has anyone noticed that ebay is flooded with these cards from China/Hong Kong? Are they legit?

Well this is what I wonder too..I might bite the bullet and try my luck...

Alternatively maybe an IBM version is a safer option.

i'm on an equivalent situation, but couldn't decide between the 9211-8i and the 9240-8i

The 9240 is around 220€ and the 9211 around 320€ and without Raid5 but cache. So is this the only difference? And (i'm new to such controllers) is the cache so important?

Thanks in advance.

Well I am no expert either but during the last week I have read quite a bit and yes the cache is really important for RAID 5 & 6.

In any case neither of those too is very good for RAID 5 (6 is better but not supported) and even if it was you need appropriate HDs for this as well. For example WD Greens won't cut it you need WD RED or better (Enterprise, SAS) or else you are looking for trouble and data loss.

I have decided on the 9211-8i since it will only be used for the extra SATA ports and of course better performance compared to the crappy generic Silicon Image PCI cards I use now.

If I decide to go for RAID it will be for 2-3 HDs and it will be RAID 1.

If you do decide to try your luck on ebay let me know how it works out. I've got a BR10i that needs replacing so I can use some 3TB drives and don't really need RAID

Well I just ordered an LSI 9211-8i from at $102 ebay by a highly rated seller. Free shipping so it will take about 20 days to Greece were I live. When here I will let you know. Aside from the delays, I always have PayPal to use if things go wrong so I am not worried.

I bought a 9211-8i and it works great. I recommend either that or the IBM M1015 (essentially the same thing).