I feel like you don't know the manner of forum post conversation !! .. But i can illiterate it to you, it's like someone ask a question and anyone can write something HELPFUL in POLITE way hence if you can't satisfy this simple equation so DON'T make share .. simple as that ! .. BTW, I'm happy with your last phrase "I am out"...
Moderator note: The moderators appreciate you trying to do their job for them, but please note that if we're unhappy with behaviour, it's our role to raise the point directly with a poster. The other "manner of forum post conversation" that you appear to have forgotten is that you've solicited input, and that you should be open to listening to the advice of experienced forum members who've tried to correct you. There was nothing particularly objectionable here, especially since you appear to be resisting the correct guidance that's been repeatedly offered to you. You are being frustrating towards those people who are trying to help you.
The general experience with random SATA expander cards has been that they tend to have various problems, which can include "they don't work", or "they're PCIe X1", or "they aren't fully featured". It is unlikely that anyone in the FreeNAS community is going to have tried the cards you've indicated because at least one of these problems is obvious on the face of it.
My last post question was to all who shared or not in the entire thread .. so anyone who have this experience can say it .. But on the other side, all shares in that thread has been taken into consideration and not neglected !!
Final thing to clarify, is that my build is very simple home build not "big expensive entrprise grade professional truenas" build, hence it's more than logic to find solutions that fits it in functional way and also price point of view..if there is not, so be it .. so simple !!!
Most people running FreeNAS are already trying to do so as inexpensively as possible. This does not translate to you finding some magic option to use cheaper hardware than the cheapest tier that's been found to work reliably over the last DECADE.
Additionally, had you done any searching to determine compatibility of the hardware on your own, you'd likely have found that this second card you've suggested is not only a PCIe x1 card, but also based on a JMB575 SATA port multiplier, which is a train wreck and guaranteed not to work.
The
AsMedia 1064 is a 4 port AHCI controller, which is going to be limited to a theoretical 1GB/s at PCIe 3, and I'd be real skeptical of hooking up four hard drives to this, especially if you weren't on a PCIe 3 host, because ZFS will absolutely plaster the thing with I/O during scrubs or rebuilds, and just because a controller "supports" a single 1GB/s lane doesn't mean it can actually keep up at that rate.
A 1064-based 4 port card where you only use two ports of it might plausibly work. This is dependent on a lot of factors, though, including whether or not the genuine AsMedia 106x parts work correctly, whether your card HAS genuine parts or Shenzhen back-alley knock-ofs, etc. As I pointed out earlier in this thread, lots of PC SATA port "expanders" are known to have various problems. I *believe* that if you could find a genuine 1062- or 1064-based AsMedia controller from a reputable source, without port multipliers, that you could use it for two drives and I'd be willing to bet that it would be okay.
In general, you have presented a really difficult problem. Not the controller, but rather your general desperation to avoid the good advice in search of a cheaper solution. The posters who have participated understand that the solution commonly known to work is an expensive enterprise SAS controller, and that the solution to "expensive" is to buy them used, where you can get them used for a tenth of the "new" price.
See, if I go and
buy one of those SATA 4-port controllers new, that's $32, and I only get maybe two usable ports, or $16/port, and it might not work.
If I instead
buy a Dell PERC H310 used for $22, I get eight usable ports, or $2.75/port, and it is guaranteed to work.
This is why people doing "very simple home builds" are recommending the better and cheaper hardware. Hope you can understand. On the flip side, you're not the first person from the Middle East that has complained about hardware availability. I don't know what the problem is there. Even if gear is held for a longer lifecycle, I would kinda think that the ten year old kit would be getting decommissioned...
