I need more SATA ports, cheap

K

Kil4Thril

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 21, 2003
Messages
2,974
One of those fine midwestern storms took out my WHS' motherboard last week. I switched to a little ATOM board which works fine, but only has 2 SATA ports. I need a PCI card with SATA ports, but they don't review well. What do I look for for reliability and compatibility?

Side note: I can use a Jetway daughter card if someone has one cheap, but those things are expensive. Jetway ADPE4S
 
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8. $100 brand new, 8 ports, PCI-X card that works just fine in a PCI slot. I'm running two in my ZFS NAS now. $12.50/port, cheaper if you get 'em off eBay.
 
Also cheaper if you get them off the [H] Buy & Sell section. I've seen them go for anywhere around $80 down to $40 when somebody was looking to liquidate.
 
Probably doesn't matter since you have an Atom based storage server but access will be slow (like 20-30mbye/s tops using RAID5 or similar) using a PCI card.
//Danne
 
diizzy said:
Probably doesn't matter since you have an Atom based storage server but access will be slow (like 20-30mbye/s tops using RAID5 or similar)
Click to expand...
Well my Acer AH342 (Atom D510) with WHSv1 get transfers of between 60 - 80 mg/s with 5400rpm drives in a none raid setup.
 
You most likely don't want to touch SiI3114 controllers cards such as the Rosewill card linked above unless "you feel lucky" and its also very old.
//Danne
 
Am I going to be better in the long run just getting a new board with enough ports and going that route? I'm sure I can hit up the For Sale section and find something nice (I can go ATX), I was just hoping to get by cheaply. My board that got hit was my S939, so I'd need board, CPU, and memory (unless it uses DDR1 or DDR2 SODIMM).
 
In my opinion, yes. PCI for several drives was never a good idea anyway, so even if you stay on a board without enough SATA, at least take one with PCIe.
 
TeeJayHoward said:
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8. $100 brand new, 8 ports, PCI-X card that works just fine in a PCI slot. I'm running two in my ZFS NAS now. $12.50/port, cheaper if you get 'em off eBay.
Click to expand...

I'm not too familiar with that card, but it looks like the unused part of the PCI-X connector will hang off the back of a regular PCI slot? The OP might want to check to make sure the mobo has enough clearance if it's a mini-ITX ATOM board.
 
Metaluna said:
I'm not too familiar with that card, but it looks like the unused part of the PCI-X connector will hang off the back of a regular PCI slot? The OP might want to check to make sure the mobo has enough clearance if it's a mini-ITX ATOM board.
Click to expand...

That's true. It does hang off the back. Thanks for mentioning that, I didn't even think about it!
 
diizzy said:
You most likely don't want to touch SiI3114 controllers cards such as the Rosewill card linked above unless "you feel lucky" and its also very old.
//Danne
Click to expand...

Why is that? I have two of those in my server... I don't know if it's rosewill, but the cards look exactly the same. 2 internal and 2 external, can pick between with jumpers (can't have all 4 working at once). I'm wondering if this would be the cause of some past issues I had with drives appearing like they were failing.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Why is that? I have two of those in my server... I don't know if it's rosewill, but the cards look exactly the same. 2 internal and 2 external, can pick between with jumpers (can't have all 4 working at once). I'm wondering if this would be the cause of some past issues I had with drives appearing like they were failing.
Click to expand...

I also use them with no problem.

OP, I have no idea about your price range but if the expansion card is worth more than the MB maybe you outta look for another MB.

Put your budget out there if you want to get serious.
 
diizzy said:
Probably doesn't matter since you have an Atom based storage server but access will be slow (like 20-30mbye/s tops using RAID5 or similar) using a PCI card.
//Danne
Click to expand...

An atom is more than sufficient for software RAID 5.

I have 5x2TB in RAID 5 and use a 1.6GHz atom CPU and I have no problems pulling 100MB/s over the gigabit network.
 
If I were to put the drives in my main machine, could I easily access everything? Is it possible to make a VM and add all the drives to it, and simply run WHS that way- simplifying my area somewhat?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top