Best SATA Card / Controller

[kcsims]

I am looking to add more drives to my setup, but I only have 4 sata ports onboard and currently have 4 drives installed. I am looking to add another 4 and I'm looking for the best solution. Which card(s) are good? My setup does have 2 PCI-e 16 ports.

Second - should I move the current 4 drives I have installed to a PCI-e controller? Any benefits to using a card over the motherboard ports?

Thanks.

 

[survive]

Hi kcsims,

Here's a good list of cards:

http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10

and another list that goes into more detail:

http://www.servethehome.com/category/server-parts/sas-sata-raid-controller-hba/

The first is about a year old, but the SAS\SATA controller market doesn't exactly move at lightning speed. If you are willing to buy off ebay or from the server parts brokers there are some real steals to be had out there.

I moved from the 6 on-board AMD SB750 ports to an LSI 1068-based IBM BR10i and it appears that I gained exactly zero performance based on the "dd" tests I have run, but the change was still worth it. I switched to an 8-drive case so now I can support all the drives on 1 controller and the cable management is so much easier using the SFF-8087 cables the BR10i requires.

-Will

 

[ProtoSD]

Hi Kcsims,

There is also the recommended hardware thread here in the forums:

FAQ-What-hardware-should-I-Buy-Get-Use-or-is-recommended

 

[freeflow]

This was the cheapest way I found of expanding sata ports

http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sn...S&cid=41147&lid=1069636&acd=23975883824506333

You will need to buy the SAS->sata cables serately but this can be done quite cheaply on ebay.

 

[kcsims]

How is the performance of those dell cards? I am only using this for a file server for my home to stream movies/music/etc. I may set it up on a z-raid sometime, but not now. Anything special you need to do to get those cards to work?

Thanks!

 

[survive]

Hi kcsims,

I have a couple of SAS 5i/r cards as well as a couple of rebranded\OEM LSI cards and given my choice I prefer the LSI cards. The Dell cards work just fine, it's just easier to "map" the other cards to their exact match in LSI's product lineup so you can determine which firmware you want to load.

If you are planning on using the card's built in RAID you might be a little disappointed, they work just fine but they really aren't that smart...they don't have any on-board cache like a PERC card does, but with the "IT" firmware they work great for ZFS. The IT firmware basically turn the card into a simple dumb controller card (like an old SCSI card) which is exactly what you want with ZFS.

The SAS 6 uses a 30-someodd pin connector that usually breaks out to the 4 individual SAS\SATA cables right at the card so routing them to the drives can get kind of messy....it's about the same as using the motherboard ports with individual SATA cables so be sure you have some zip-ties to keep it neat!

-Will