eSATA Port Multiplier PCIe

Hey,

I'm looking at getting something like this: 8 Bay 3.5 inch HDD USB 3.0 external Enclosure Tower Box with JBOD from icybox IB-3680SU3

It has 1 eSATA interface. I need a PCIe eSATA card that can support 8 drives. NAS is normal my field so not really sure what's out there in terms of eSATA stuff.

Thanks.

I could be off base here, but I assume that you want the card for your PC, which in turn will connect to this box as a NAS. A port multiplier card would only be needed to treat each drive as an individual drive (ie: 8 single drives and not one (JBOD) drive), but for that to work, the enclosure also has to support that option as ell. I don't see that listed as an option.

Yes that's right. I want to expose each disk to Windows individually. The manual suggests it can do this: http://www.raidsonic.de/products/ex...cases_35/IB-3680SU3/pdf/IB-3680_Series_EN.pdf

What would be a compatible card?

Also, I notice the eSATA port on this box is 3Gbps only. Does eSATA 6Gbps exist on anything similar?

USB 3.0 / eSATA 8-Bay Hot-Swap 2.5/3.5” SATA III Hard Drive Enclosure with UASP – 8-Bay SATA 6 Gbps Enclosure for HDD / SSD

?

Specifically says Port Multiplier and 6Gbps eSATA.

The Accessories for that show this card:

2 Port PCI Express SATA 6 Gbps eSATA Controller Card - Dual Port PCIe SATA III Card - 2 Int/2 Ext

which has port mulitplier, but it's only upto 4 drives. I need a card that will support 8 drives over one port/cable, or an enclsoure that has 2 eSATA ports.

If you shop around on fleabay etc you can get a LSI 2008 controller card with external ports (9211-8e or equivalent, 6Gbps SAS2/SATA3) and a SAS enclosure for quite a bit less than the ~$500 stuff you posted.

A dual port SAS card is 8 drives over two cables and most enclosures would give you room to grow up to 16-24 drives with an expander. Port multipliers are literally crap, and eSATA is a bit of a hack anyways. External SAS cables and connectors were actually designed for longer runs and LSI controllers have excellent driver support. SATA3 runs over SAS2 fine, only have to be sure if you use expanders that they properly support it.

I'm not a big fan of expansion cards. I feel like they are a weak point. But to each their own. I've seen a lot of expensive raid controller cards fail. Perhaps port multiplier is different.