Controller card?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 184142
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Deleted member 184142

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Soo...Upgraded to a small little home server setup, mostly for Plex and the like, filled with 5 5TB drives and one SSD for the OS, but the library grew faster than I thought it would and I am out of SATA ports. I have been looking at some controller cards to add in and some pretty shit reviews for everything across the board really. I don't need RAID, just a controller card, so any RAID function is only a plus, that might never get used. After looking for a while, I really don't know where to go, I would like something with 8 ports, no less than 6 however, probably going to get that many new drives to start with.

After looking and reading around, it really looks like the best option might be a used server grade SAS card with some SAS to SATA cables? Or am I looking at this all wrong or did I over look a diamond in the rough somewhere?

Trying to stay under $200.
 
Any reason for that card? Looks like a pretty good deal and should support the drives I need.
 
I like it because it is LSI, and well supported. Also, it has the IT firmware on it, meaning that the drives are just made available to the OS. There is no HW raid. I always prefer software raid over hardware raid. Performance is identical, and you are not screwed if the controller dies.

Let me expand on the last point a bit.
Most controller cards that do RAID will put the configuration of the array on the drives in some proprietary format. Making it hard for controllers of Brand A to read the config of Brand B. It means that if your card dies, you don't have options, all you can do is buy the same card again (which you won'd be happy about because the crappy thing just died) and hope the firmware of the new card is compatible with the config on the disks.

IMO software RAID (be it dmraid or ZFS) is superior in every way then hardware raid, and much cheaper to implement.
 
Thanks, sounds just like what I am looking for.
 
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