Cheapest 4/8 Port SATA or 1/2 Port SAS (Non-RAID) card?

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Trackr

[H]ard|Gawd
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I need to replace my Perc 5/i card to a Non-RAID card because, apparently, RAID cards don't place nicely with FlexRAID.

I already have the SAS - 4 SATA cables, so a Dual-SAS card (like the Perc 5/i) that isn't RAID would be nice.

Thanks!
 
Umm you may have to get new SAS to SATA cables as the Dell uses the older SFF-8484 SAS connection whereas virtually every SAS to SATA card in the past 3 years or so are using SFF-8087 SAS connection. They're incompatible.
 
From my research I believe the IBM M1015 flashed to be an LSI9211-IT is about the best option:

http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/

Though I haven't done this yet myself, and I have read the M1015 can be a bit picky about motherboards when it comes to being able to flash it.

As noted above this uses the SFF-8087 style of connector.

Good luck, let us know which path you choose and how you get on.
 
Neme said:
From my research I believe the IBM M1015 flashed to be an LSI9211-IT is about the best option:

http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/

Though I haven't done this yet myself, and I have read the M1015 can be a bit picky about motherboards when it comes to being able to flash it.

As noted above this uses the SFF-8087 style of connector.

Good luck, let us know which path you choose and how you get on.
Click to expand...

Okay, but isn't that still a RAID card? I need just a cheap-ass SATA expansion card.. but I have only two PCIe x1 slots and one PCIe x16 slot left on the board.

Also, the IBM M1015 is 150$ on eBay.. that's more than I spent on the Perc 5/i with battery and RAM.
 
It is a RAID card untill you flash it to LSI9211-IT (all the details are in the article about the different modes you can flash it into).

LSI9211-IT = Straight pass through no RAID, best for ZFS file system etc
LSI9211-IR = Pass through as in IT mode, but you also have RAID options (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 1e and RAID 10), better for RAID 0 Windows boot SSDs etc, and possibly run Software RAID 5 on the other drives.
LSI9240 = default mode, only really useful feature this mode has is RAID1/ RAID 10, drives have to be set to JBOD (single) or RAID to be seen by OS, can be annoying when adding removing drives often.
Click to expand...

Regarding costs there are certainly cheaper HBA only cards out there, though with many of them i have found mixed reports on performance and/or issues when trying to add more than 1 HBA card into a system.

If you find a good alternative I would be interested to take a look at it :)

My own flexraid pproject has been in the planning stages for a while, still got space on my 5TB hardware Raid5 array for now, but once that is full I'll probably be moving everything over to a new system with a much larger Flexraid T2+ or Tx storage pool. Have also been waiting for drive prices to come back down.
 
Trackr said:
Also, the IBM M1015 is 150$ on eBay.. that's more than I spent on the Perc 5/i with battery and RAM.
Click to expand...

I have seen that many times for 1/2 that price. Although looking at the current offerings perhaps the flood of the sub $100 used / new system pulls M1015s is drying up..
 
I read on another thread that the M1015 has become too popular (I own one too, paid less than the cables cost me), and now the H200 is suggested.
 
Neme said:
It is a RAID card untill you flash it to LSI9211-IT (all the details are in the article about the different modes you can flash it into).



Regarding costs there are certainly cheaper HBA only cards out there, though with many of them i have found mixed reports on performance and/or issues when trying to add more than 1 HBA card into a system.

If you find a good alternative I would be interested to take a look at it :)

My own flexraid pproject has been in the planning stages for a while, still got space on my 5TB hardware Raid5 array for now, but once that is full I'll probably be moving everything over to a new system with a much larger Flexraid T2+ or Tx storage pool. Have also been waiting for drive prices to come back down.
Click to expand...

if you on linux flavor , you do not need to flash to IT mode :), since HBA 9240 (on M1015 /H200/H310/others card) can passthrough all unconfigured HDs. I have on my system running mdadm RAID 6 :p. ( tested zfs on linux, worked as I expected). the HBA card (IR) can passthrough all unconfigured drive, SmartCtl can read all drives. make sure to update the latest firmware from LSI
but...
when you are talking on open solaris flavor... you need to flash 9211 IT due on lacking stable modules for newer LSI model, for example LSI 9240.


to add more 1 HBA, your motherboard is the main key...
on my "old" LGA771 with mix pci-x/pci-e/pci-e version 2, I can mix and match LSI/Marvell cards.
one combination never working is marvell/adaptec Raid card (3XXX or 4XXXX),
Marvell card is complaining "not loading rom... something".
LSI/adaptec can work along...
 
Aesma said:
I read on another thread that the M1015 has become too popular (I own one too, paid less than the cables cost me), and now the H200 is suggested.
Click to expand...

I scored one H200 for $75 with F/S ~ 3 weeks ago on ebay
 
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