About PERC H200 and H310 HBA cards found on Ebay

[Imslow]

Dear TrueNas community, my TrueNAS server aggregates consumer parts from several years ago: Intel Haswell generation... and runs just great!
I am now looking for an inexpensive way to increase the SATA port count for adding a couple more disks and migrate my server to a 6-disk Z2 configuration. My workload includes casual video editing.
I found several cards on Ebay under PERC H200 and H310. One of the vendor claims that the card was flashed to IT mode.
Follows two questions:
_ which one of H200 and H310 would you recommend for my type of workload? Any better alternative?
_ would you bet your own money on this vendor? DELL H310 6Gbps SAS HBA FW:P20 9211-8i IT Mode ZFS FreeNAS unRAID 2* SATA Cable
Thanks very much for your help,

 

[Redcoat]

Many of us here have had great success with purchases from the Art of Server on ebay https://www.ebay.com/str/theartofserver and he is accordingly highly recommended. For me, a purchase from him is a "sure thing".

Look at his current list at All Items for 9211-8i - all flashed to IT mode. Note the different port positions on the H200 (on top of the card) vs the the rear on the H310 or the 9201-8i next to it. Choose the best one for your board/chassis layout cabling.

 

[Imslow]

Many of us here have had great success with purchases from the Art of Server on ebay https://www.ebay.com/str/theartofserver and he is accordingly highly recommended. For me, a purchase from him is a "sure thing".

Look at his current list at All Items for 9211-8i - all flashed to IT mode. Note the different port positions on the H200 (on top of the card) vs the the rear on the H310 or the 9201-8i next to it. Choose the best one for your board/chassis layout cabling.

Dear Redcoat, thank you very much for your feedback. I followed your advices and should receive the card in the coming weeks. I went for the model with the ports facing the back of the card... Let me write a more detailed feedback to the community on how the installation went after a few weeks. Hopefully, this could demystify the use of HBA cards for newbies (like me~).

 

[Redcoat]

Very good - this should be a no brainer. Install the card in a slot location where there is good airflow - the chip with the heatsink needs to be able to keep itself cool.

 

[Imslow]

Dear TrueNAS community, as promised, please find some feedback on the installation of the HBA card. I was hitting some difficulties as my system would not post until the PCI-E bus pins B5 and B6 of the card were taped and masked. I followed this blog advices: Modding a Dell Perc 6 / Dell H310 / Dell H710 (other LSI 1078 or 9223-8i based) SAS Raidcontroller.
After this fun exercise, the server booted normally and I could add additional disks without any issues.