LSI MegaRAID SAS9260-8i controller questions

[nivi3]

I bought LSI MegaRAID SAS9260-8i controller card by mistake.

According to specs of this card it can be used in the following ways:

RAID Levels 0, 1, 5 and 6
RAID Spans 10, 50 and 60

I have an old ancient PC on which having RAID probably is not
a good idea. I just want to connect couple of drives to the
controller and use them at full SATA 3 speed of 6Gbps.
My PC has only one PCI-E x16 version 1.0 slot. The onboard SATA port
is only SATA 1 which I don't want to use as this makes the connected SSD and HDD's slow.

Will it allow me to use the card in Pass Through Mode i.e
I can use the controller without using any RAID or JBOD?

Will it disable onboard SATA ports? Can I have some hard drives connected
to SAS9260-8i in RAID 0 or 1 mode and at the same time have some hard drives connected to
onboard SATA ports?


Please post if you know the anwwers. I have read very little about
RAID in some networking book.Please pardon me if this
question has been asked before.

 

[Spearfoot]

I bought LSI MegaRAID SAS9260-8i controller card by mistake.

According to specs of this card it can be used in the following ways:

RAID Levels 0, 1, 5 and 6
RAID Spans 10, 50 and 60

I have an old ancient PC on which having RAID probably is not
a good idea. I just want to connect couple of drives to the
controller and use them at full SATA 3 speed of 6Gbps.
My PC has only one PCI-E x16 version 1.0 slot. The onboard SATA port
is only SATA 1 which I don't want to use as this makes the connected SSD and HDD's slow.

Will it allow me to use the card in Pass Through Mode i.e
I can use the controller without using any RAID or JBOD?

Will it disable onboard SATA ports? Can I have some hard drives connected
to SAS9260-8i in RAID 0 or 1 mode and at the same time have some hard drives connected to
onboard SATA ports?


Please post if you know the anwwers. I have read very little about
RAID in some networking book.Please pardon me if this
question has been asked before.

I get the impression you're not planning on building a FreeNAS system... If you are, stop now, exchange the 9260 for a 9211 or similar, and buy a new motherboard!

It's possible the 9260 card will not work in your old PC; it's a x8 PCI Express 2.0 device.

While the 9260 can't be re-flashed as a basic HBA, I'm reasonably sure you can use individual drives as RAID0 'arrays'. This sorta defeats the whole purpose of using RAID (i.e., having redundancy).

Using the card won't disable your motherboard's SATA ports, and you can connect drives at the same time to both the 9260 and the SATA ports.

Good luck!

 

[nivi3]

Many thanks for your post!

I want to know if you are aware of any x4 or x8 Sata adapter which will work with PCI Express Version 1 too. The ones I found on internet are x1 or x2. It may be from LSI or any other vendor.

How do I use individual drives as RAID 0 arrays. In the LSI configuration should I choose RAID 0 and have each RAID 0 array having just one disk? Will it be possible to have many RAID 0 arrays at the same time connecting to MegaRAID SAS9260-8i controller?

While making the RAID array, will my existing hard drive with Windows 7 and all the applications already installed work as such or will I have to reinstall the OS and applications after partitioning the hard drive?