help with sata cards

[jbates58]

hi all

i have a backblaze pod that i got for my home media sever and gaming pc.

it used to work great (although a little slow for my liking but i kinda understood that when i got it) but after having my x58 gigabyte board die on my under waranty and getting it replaced with a new x79 board and a cpu that i had to buy for it, i still cant get it to work properly.

i am looking to get rid of the pcie 1 - sata cards that are supplied with the pod, that are based on the SIL 3124 chipset. and replace them with a M1015 or h200. but i cant find any info if those cards are compatable with port multiplers, as the backblaze runs the 9 PM's into the 3 PCIE-Satacards.

but with the x79, i cant get them to work in the 16x slots no matter what i do, even on 2 seperate boards. but they work in the x1 slots. im guessing that this is something to do with the 1x slots going to the chipset not the cpu.

anyway.

my question is, will a m1015 or h200 on IT firmware, work in my x79 board, with a sata breakout cable into port multipliers based on the SIL 3726 chipset? and will it work well, with out any dramas, and what sort of speed could i expect?

or, would i be better off getting my money back and buying something like the asrock x79 extreme 11, which has an onboard LSI chip and 8 SAS/SATA ports, and then just plug the other multiplier into the jmicron controller?

what is my best option here. this has been going on for nearly 4 months with gigabyte; whilst i have to admit they have been great in helping me, with trying boards etc... and trying to work out a solution, this is a joke and im sick of it. i have been a long time GB supporter.

i just want the system to work, and work well.

also, im using flexraid to pool the drives and running it on windows 7.

is there anyone in brisbane that would be willing to lend me their controller to try this? i could even bring my system around and try it at your house if you are interested.

cheers

Jason

 

[Blue Fox]

If I'm not mistaken, most SAS HBAs have limited/poor support of SATA port multipliers on account of SAS expanders existing.

 

[jbates58]

bugger.

is there any other options for me to use? as the pcie 1x sata cards are prety crap.

cheers

Jason

 

[mwroobel]

Unfortunately, it is going to be a crapshoot to find a SAS HBA and driver combo that will properly support whichever SATA port multipliers you have. Above and beyond that, even if the underlying controller silicon actually, properly supports it you have to hope that your particular vendors' implementation chose to activate it. Your next problem is that the X79 is a higher end prosumer chipset, and again some vendors implementation and driver choices may not match your needs. If you boot into a *nix environment, does the hardware function properly?