OP UPDATE:
- Added LSI SAS 9211-4i, 8i and 16i non-raid SAS-2, PCIe 2.0 HBA cards to the OP as verified working. These controllers do also pass SMART stats, drive temps, etc. to the host O/S. I realize someone reported success with an 8i card + HP expander back in April, but I wanted to do my own testing and see where any pitfalls or bottlenecks might be. Good cards with a lot of bandwidth, the 9211-8i is probably my favorite non-raid HBA for use with the HP expander now in terms of price/performance and future-proof for 6G drives. I picked up a couple at Provantage..
- Added Areca ARC-1880i raid card as "verified working". Still doing stress testing since I only just got this card, so far results are good.
- Downgraded the Areca ARC-1300-4x non-raid HBA to "works with expander, but not recommended" since it does not pass SMART stats or drive temps to host O/S, and starts bottlenecking with more than 3 drives worth of simultaneous read I/O. At this point its better to wait for the Areca ARC-1320 series - hopefully it'll have a beefier chip and multi-disk I/O will be improved. Not to mention Areca hasn't updated the driver on the ARC-1300 since early '09.
- Added LSI SAS 9211-4i, 8i and 16i non-raid SAS-2, PCIe 2.0 HBA cards to the OP as verified working. These controllers do also pass SMART stats, drive temps, etc. to the host O/S. I realize someone reported success with an 8i card + HP expander back in April, but I wanted to do my own testing and see where any pitfalls or bottlenecks might be. Good cards with a lot of bandwidth, the 9211-8i is probably my favorite non-raid HBA for use with the HP expander now in terms of price/performance and future-proof for 6G drives. I picked up a couple at Provantage..
- Added Areca ARC-1880i raid card as "verified working". Still doing stress testing since I only just got this card, so far results are good.
- Downgraded the Areca ARC-1300-4x non-raid HBA to "works with expander, but not recommended" since it does not pass SMART stats or drive temps to host O/S, and starts bottlenecking with more than 3 drives worth of simultaneous read I/O. At this point its better to wait for the Areca ARC-1320 series - hopefully it'll have a beefier chip and multi-disk I/O will be improved. Not to mention Areca hasn't updated the driver on the ARC-1300 since early '09.
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