Joe Goldthwaite
Dabbler
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2016
- Messages
- 38
I have an existing box that I built back in May of 2016 using the ASRock Intel Avoton C2750. That box was an upgrade of a previous Freenas box. It was using some really old 2tb drives. Some of them going back to 2010.
The box was a backup of a backup meaning that I have a Freenas main box and a secondary backup box that I periodically update with the data from the main one. Finally, every once in a while I update the third one with the old 2tb drives.
Well the poor old thing died. The C2750 will no longer boot up so I decided to do some upgrades and make it my main box. I'll rotate the older boxes to backup 1 and backup 2.
I figured since it's been five years there should be lots of options to replace the C2750. I really like that it's low power and I've had no issues with the performance. I figured for a couple of hundred dollars I should be able to build a better faster system. WRONG!
After some research I decided on the ASRock C3558D4I-4L. It's the same form factor, has even less power usage and had 13 SATA ports! I ordered it, ordered some ECC memory and some drives and started putting it together.
I decided to use 12 4TB drives in a dual Raid2Z configuration. That means that I needed to use 12 of my thirteen available ports. This is where i ran into issues. Although the board has 13 ports the most you can have active at one time is 9.
This is confusing! The documentation isn't clear unless you already know what it's saying. The IO for the SATA ports is shared by the PCIE 8X slot. There's a configuration setting in the BIOS that determines that works and what doesn't. One of the things that is disabled depending on the config chosen is the PCI-E slot!
The C3558D4I-4L has 13 storage connectors, of which up to 9 can be connected at once. 7 configurations of PCI-E, SAS and Mini-SAS HD Connector are possible. They are:
As you can see, none of the configurations lets me attach 12 drives. The PCI-e slot is only active for configs 1 to 4. I had a 4 port PCI-e card but any configuration that enables the PCI-e slot removes at least 4 ports.
At this point I could return the card and try one of the Supermicro motherboards that people prefer these days but since I already have this together and working I decided to just buy this: Syba 8 Port SATA III Non-RAID PCI-e x4
That gives me 8 ports on the PCI-E slot and I can use config1 to config3 to attach the final 4. I'll probably use config2 and a attach the final 4 drives to the Mini-SAS (A) port.
Anyway, I thought I'd post this in case someone else is searching for help on the C3558D4I-4L so they can avoid my mistakes. I'll post an update when the Syba card comes in and everything is working.
The box was a backup of a backup meaning that I have a Freenas main box and a secondary backup box that I periodically update with the data from the main one. Finally, every once in a while I update the third one with the old 2tb drives.
Well the poor old thing died. The C2750 will no longer boot up so I decided to do some upgrades and make it my main box. I'll rotate the older boxes to backup 1 and backup 2.
I figured since it's been five years there should be lots of options to replace the C2750. I really like that it's low power and I've had no issues with the performance. I figured for a couple of hundred dollars I should be able to build a better faster system. WRONG!
After some research I decided on the ASRock C3558D4I-4L. It's the same form factor, has even less power usage and had 13 SATA ports! I ordered it, ordered some ECC memory and some drives and started putting it together.
I decided to use 12 4TB drives in a dual Raid2Z configuration. That means that I needed to use 12 of my thirteen available ports. This is where i ran into issues. Although the board has 13 ports the most you can have active at one time is 9.
This is confusing! The documentation isn't clear unless you already know what it's saying. The IO for the SATA ports is shared by the PCIE 8X slot. There's a configuration setting in the BIOS that determines that works and what doesn't. One of the things that is disabled depending on the config chosen is the PCI-E slot!
The C3558D4I-4L has 13 storage connectors, of which up to 9 can be connected at once. 7 configurations of PCI-E, SAS and Mini-SAS HD Connector are possible. They are:
config1 | PCI-E x4, 5x SATA | 9 ports |
config2 | PCI-E x4, 1x Mini-SAS HD (A), 1x SATA | 5 ports |
config3 | PCI-E x4, 1x Mini-SAS HD (B), 1x SATA | 5 ports |
config4 | PCI-E x8, 1x SATA | 1 port! |
config5 | 5x SATA, 1x Mini-SAS HD (A) | 9 ports |
config6 | 2x Mini-SAS HD, 1x SATA | 9 ports |
config7 | 5x SATA, 1x Mini-SAS HD (B) | 9 ports |
As you can see, none of the configurations lets me attach 12 drives. The PCI-e slot is only active for configs 1 to 4. I had a 4 port PCI-e card but any configuration that enables the PCI-e slot removes at least 4 ports.
At this point I could return the card and try one of the Supermicro motherboards that people prefer these days but since I already have this together and working I decided to just buy this: Syba 8 Port SATA III Non-RAID PCI-e x4
That gives me 8 ports on the PCI-E slot and I can use config1 to config3 to attach the final 4. I'll probably use config2 and a attach the final 4 drives to the Mini-SAS (A) port.
Anyway, I thought I'd post this in case someone else is searching for help on the C3558D4I-4L so they can avoid my mistakes. I'll post an update when the Syba card comes in and everything is working.