SATA card compatibility

[Hermit]

Hi, I've run out of space on my TrueNAS and I've decided to add another pool with two 2TB drives but unfortunately I've also run out of SATA connectors on my motherboard so I've decided to use a SATA expansion card with two SATA connectors (not an ideal solution, I know) to get more storage space witch brings me to my question.

Before I buy the card I'd like to ask if it is even compatible with TrueNAS. The two cards I'm considering are based on ASMEDIA ASM1061 and Marvell 88SE9125 chipsets respectively. I've searched for the answer on the internet but all the threads I could find were several years old so I'd like make sure.

I'm running TrueNAS-12.0-U5 on an old PC(not ideal, I know).
CPU: FX-4300
MB: N68C-GS FX
RAM: 8GB DDR3 (max)
HDD 3x8TB

 

[mav@]

Both of those chipsets are pretty old but should work. Just don't expect too much from them, they are cheap desktop ones. For Marvell there are versions with RAID firmware, those you should avoid, is possible.

 

[HoneyBadger]

I believe the ASMedia chipsets have had a better track record than Marvell historically.

(I assume an LSI HBA isn't an option?)

 

[mav@]

May be. I remember ASMedia as slower one, but Marvell on the other side had zillion of models and firmware versions, some of which were troublesome.

 

[Ericloewe]

The big one was that one of the controllers on the C2750D4I, as used on the FreeNAS Mini of the time, was apparently more reliable than the other one, to the point that you guys had to get ASRock or Marvell directly to provide a firmware update. Looks like it's still up at ASRock. (Sidenote: ASRock's technical writers resorted to taking photos of a physical monitor? The boards have IPMI!)
I never did fully understand that one, it's like half the users had zero issues and the other half had general crap like controller resets.

 

[Hermit]

Both of those chipsets are pretty old but should work. Just don't expect too much from them, they are cheap desktop ones. For Marvell there are versions with RAID firmware, those you should avoid, is possible.

I thought that all these cheap desktop SATA cards have a RAID firmware. How can I tell the ones that do have it from the ones that don't and what would be the downside of using one with the RAID firmware?

 

[Samuel Tai]

Don't bother; in all likelihood you'll be getting either a crappy RAID card or a port multiplier.

Multiply your problems with SATA Port Multipliers and cheap SATA controllers

In the last year or two, we've had a resurgence of users asking about SATA Port Multipliers and cheap SATA controllers. Please, do NOT use port multipliers, and use cheap SATA controllers only after extensive research. SATA controllers and SATA...

www.truenas.com

Get a real LSI HBA. You can get them off eBay for ~$20-30.

 

[Hermit]

Alright so after some consideration I've decided to go for the LSI HBA as per your suggestion after all. Before I buy it I'd just like to make sure that LSi 9240-8i (with IT firmware according to the listing) is a good choice for media storage on hard drives (I don't plan on using SSDs).

 

[Samuel Tai]

That should be fine.