I just bought this RAID card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118055 and I was wondering where I can find the expanders to make this card work with 16 HDD? I have googled around and I have found anything that I think will work. I may just not know what it is that I need. Thanks for any help!
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SAS expander?
- Thread starter marcusicp
- Start date
Are you sure that card can handle 16 x HDDs? That card you linked to on newegg has 2 x 8087 SFF channels, each having a x4 lane bandwidth (meaning each of those channels can support 4x SATA drives. I believe that card can only handle 8 drives, and the cable to expand those 8087 SFF to a 4x SATA plugs is included (2 of the cables, 2 cables X 4 Drives per cable = 8 Drives). Not sure where you get 16 hdds from.
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- Aug 12, 2004
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Well.... the Specs from LSI show as 16 drive support (from LSI's site) "the eight-port MegaRAID SAS 8308ELP provides greater deployment flexibility with support for up to 16 devices using SAS expanders". You could use two of these from Supermicro http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/mobilerack/CSE-M28E2.cfm
Each one will connect to one of the two high density SAS connectors on the card giving you 8 connections per channel.
Each one will connect to one of the two high density SAS connectors on the card giving you 8 connections per channel.
I think the standard for SAS allows for 128 devices per channel, if you made them all expanders, will full drives on each expander, a single channel is capable of something like 16,000 drives. While not efficient, more than covers the meager 16 he wants to attach.
Example pulled from adaptecs website: http://www.adaptec.com/pdfs/lta_sata.pdf