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e-sata and multiple multi-drive enclosures

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AQ_OC

2[H]4U
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Jan 23, 2011
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Does anyone know of a low-cost e-sata card that has the port multiplier feature enabled for multiple multi-drive enclosures?

I'd much rather not pay $200 for a single card.
 
Hiya,

I've used 3 cards that support port multiplier, each of which has been pretty good for me.
The JMB363 based card are port-multiplier capable, but the one I had is only a single eSATA port - still pretty capable and lasted me a couple of years (before I needed more ports - it was running fine). The Silicon Image SiI3132 based cards are similarly capable, and I've used a two-port eSATA card happily for a couple of years (and am still using it).

I don't have US references for the cards, as I'm in the UK, but the following are very similar to the cards that I have/had:

http://www.span.com/product/SATA-3G...eSATA-supports-Port-Multipliers-JMB362-~16361
- single eSATA PMP port
http://www.span.com/product/SATA-3G...SATA-supports-Port-Multipliers-SiI3132-~15995
- dual eSATA PMP port

Both are fine with linux in most modern versions (2.6 onwards, pretty much, although I'd suggest versions beyond 2.6.32 as I'm unsure how well it worked before there).

The most recent card I've got is a 4-port highpoint RAID controller, each port of which is PMP capable (giving support for up to 20 discs). The card is the RocketRAID 644L, and (this may or may not matter to you) it needs a custom driver in order to support the hardware RAID on Linux. Allegedly you can flash it down to the non-RAID version and it works as an AHCI device, but I've not attempted that myself. I'm so far pretty happy with it, but I've been trying out its hardware RAID capabilities for the past 3 weeks to get a feel for how it works and how it reacts to certain things before I commit data to it. If I'm not happy, I'll use the non-RAID driver and use linux md raid. It was only 30 pounds more for the RAID version, so I thought I'd give it a go and see if it was worthwhile.

The two options I had were:
http://www.scan.co.uk/search.aspx?q=644l
- and I went for the more expensive of the two (at £90, compared to £63).

Last week I left a review on their site with my findings to date, which is a bit wordy, and I don't see the point in repeating here - http://www.scan.co.uk/products/high...ci-e-20-x4-to-sata-6gb-s-raid-controller-card - should give you a feel for the device.

I've written a few bits in my diary about what I've found with the card and the response from HighPoint, which you can find here:
http://gerph.org/diary/2013/diary-feb.html#10_Feb_2013
The entry on the 10th summarises the problems that I reported to them, all of which are probably exclusive to Linux.

Anyhow, hopefully that will give you something to go on in your search for PMP capable cards - sorry I can't offer any US-centric advice.
 
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