ver 4.0 compatible SATA PCI-e cards

melechmet · April 20, 2007

Can everyone post what PCI-E SATA card they are using, if it's 100% compatible and reliable (also any benchmarks would be highly appreciated).

I currently waiting to build two systems,

1. a small formfactor with a Mini ITX board and perhaps a low profile 4 port SATA card, to support 5 drives in total.

2. a 12+ drive chassisbased, maybe based on either the Norco SATA case.

Looking to find reliable PCI-e SATA boards for both.

Thanks.

Peregrine · April 20, 2007

Quoting another poster from another thread:

Commell LV-674 Pentium D Mini-ITX Mainboard

http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/products_id/489

Also

http://www.commell.com.tw/product/SBC/LV-672.HTM

http://www.commell.com.tw/product/IPC/CMB-672.HTM

I was going to use this but could not find a satisfactory small form factor case that can handle the 4 drives.

If you find one, Please update me.

I ended up building a CMB-673. What a great machine!

It has a PCIe slot, so I was thinking of adding a PCIe eSata card and using a SansDigital MSUM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111025

This would have allowed maximum expandibility to 8 externally accesible drives + 2 internal.

But I actually use my cmb-673 for nagios monitoring, dhcp, dns, syslog consolidation, php-syslog, snort, and backup storage with hdup & rdiff.

So,the unraid OS was a little too sparse for me to use.

If unRaid were just an RPM Driver install using a boot flash as a key check, I would be all over it.

(I still may consider it in the future).

For the record

CMB-673

http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/IPC/CMB-673(NS).HTM

and

http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/IPC.htm

Six SATA ports on a mini ITX board - no cards needed.

melechmet · April 20, 2007

Thanks, we've been communicating on that thread! I n this one I'd just like to identify usable PCI-e SATA boards.

RobJ · April 25, 2007

I've just successfully installed a SYBA SD-SA2PEX-2IR PCI Express SATA II Controller Card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815124027. It was fully supported in unRAID, v4.0-beta9, uses sata_sil24 module, thanks Tom!

It's based on the Silicon Image 3132 chipset, which supports 2 internal or external SATA II ports. This may not sound exactly like what you want, but 3132-based cards claim to support the new port multiplier technology, as in this http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.asp. Tom says support is still 'experimental', but it seems exciting for the future, to be able to easily add 10 SATA ports (one 3132-based card ($35) and 2 5-in-1 port multiplier cards (2x$85)). I especially like the Addonics cards' no-slot feature, uses any unused slot bracket but no PCI or PCI-E or other slot type, requires a floppy power connection only.

See also this thread http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=567.0.

I've only just installed and tested the Syba card, and the speed 'seems' very good, but I can't give you any long-term reliability thoughts.

On the first boot, there were lots of boot errors and unRAID did not start, but after a reboot, it seemed to reconfigure itself and came up perfect. I moved the SATA cable attached to /dev/md2 (my third SATA drive) to the first SATA connector on the Syba card, from the the third motherboard SATA connector. After the installation and the extra reboot, and a re-select of my HD on the Devices page, the unRAID server started up perfectly, not even a parity check required. In other words, I moved a drive to a completely different disk controller, and nothing had to be rebuilt, re-initialized, whatever! Try doing that with most other RAID systems, especially if striped! (I'm very new to unRAID, so my terminology may be wrong.)

I bought this one from Newegg for $25, it's now $35, similar to other comparable cards. Price range for 2-port SATA II cards seems to be about $25 to $40. To get a 4-port card, price jumps to $110 and up and always seems to have RAID. I could not find anything with 4 or more ports that did not also require paying for RAID even if you don't want RAID.

I did install it first on a Windows XP, in order to flash the BIOS to the latest, 7.3.13, from Silicon Image web site.

I just checked and all 3 SATA drives have spun down, that is sooo cool!!! Can't wait to add more drives and the pro version of unRAID.

WeeboTech · April 25, 2007

I like this one....

SoNNeT TSATAII-E4P PCI Express SATA II Controller Card

It's has lots of potential (20 drives!!!), compatibility is still in question, yet still something to consider.

melechmet · April 26, 2007

RobJ,

very niice!!! Did you try the addonics multiplier with it? Would you know if there are any performance penalty (throughput/letancy etc) that a port multiplier would introduce?

RobJ · April 26, 2007

No, can't afford it for now, but almost certainly will in the future. Somewhere I read that all of the SATA drives on a port multiplier have to share the 3.0 Gb/s max SATA II speed, so benchmarks with varying numbers of drives will be important. Like you, awaiting testing by others...

For now, the 2 port 3132-based PCI-Express cards are cheap, allows me to grow my system slowly.