16 port PCI-E controller?

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trmentry

Weaksauce
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Feb 16, 2007
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I've been looking around for a 16 port PCI-E controller for some sata drives. I don't want RAID at all on the card. Does such a beast exist? I seem to keep finding RAID cards.

If not, can one of these raid cards just be used as a controller? No RAID at all just disks.
 
You can use the controller as a HBA, yes. The Highpoint series cards (specifically the 2340) work fine under Windows and Linux, and if later you get the urge to put some drives in raid 5, it works fine for that too.
 
unhappy_mage said:
You can use the controller as a HBA, yes. The Highpoint series cards (specifically the 2340) work fine under Windows and Linux, and if later you get the urge to put some drives in raid 5, it works fine for that too.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I'm more interested in keeping my software raid 5 setup going. Just out of PCI slots.
 
trmentry said:
I've been looking around for a 16 port PCI-E controller for some sata drives. I don't want RAID at all on the card. Does such a beast exist? I seem to keep finding RAID cards.

If not, can one of these raid cards just be used as a controller? No RAID at all just disks.
Click to expand...

You wont find a stand alone basic controller for this many drives (Believe me, I've looked everywhere for one).


However, you can use a RAID card and just run it as a controller with no RAID functionality (this is what I do).
 
Ockie said:
You wont find a stand alone basic controller for this many drives (Believe me, I've looked everywhere for one).


However, you can use a RAID card and just run it as a controller with no RAID functionality (this is what I do).
Click to expand...

What card did you end up going with?

This seem like such a waste as you pay out the nose for the raid functionality. :mad:
 
Seems like moving to hardware raid would be a logical move, but why is it that you want to keep your raid as software?
 
trmentry said:
What card did you end up going with?

This seem like such a waste as you pay out the nose for the raid functionality. :mad:
Click to expand...

I have a few for my other machines, in the past I used 1820A's, and a 1640 without the raid functionality. This time I will be using two 2340's w/o raid.

Yes you pay out the nose, but I can't spare the overhead a raid setup would consume. I wish they did just make dummy controllers in 16 to 32 port flavors, that would be awesome.
 
Well they make cheap 8 port controllers which are just dummy controllers, and they are awesome too... just need to double that port count :(


The more I think about it the more I regret my motherboard decision for my server, I should have just added two more 8 porters in.


Give me your feedback:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1113595
 
Ockie said:
Well they make cheap 8 port controllers which are just dummy controllers, and they are awesome too... just need to double that port count :(
Click to expand...
PCI-X form Supermicro, right? AOC-something or other.
 
oplin said:
Seems like moving to hardware raid would be a logical move, but why is it that you want to keep your raid as software?
Click to expand...

I chose to go with software raid in linux b/c then I'm not tied to a particular card. I've been burned in the past with a hardware raid controller failing and unable to get the same card to replace the dead one due to EOL or whatnot. Thus finding out that the new card I got doesn't understand the previous card's way of writing things.... (ie no standards) and thus my data goes POOF.

With software raid, I can just hook the drives up to any old controller and viola my data is back. Linux does what it needs to with looking at the uuid's of the drives, etc. No more hardware raid for me. Too many vendors with too many ways of doing things. Software raid at least just works. :)
 
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