Supermicro X9SCM-F-O Sata limitation

[Romulus]

I purchased a Supermicro X9SCM-F-O and I am worried I am limited to installing only two sata 3 hard drives, because only two of the 6 sata ports on the motherboard are sata 3. Would I be able to install 5 or 6 sata 3 NAS hard drives across all available ports in this motherboard? My guess is yes, since the wd red drives are backwards compatible. Is this a correct assumption? Also, would hard drive speed performance be affected? Thanks.

 

[melloa]

My guess is yes,

You can use all six ports and if need more, read about controllers here: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

 

[Stux]

Sata3 is 600MB/s and Sata2 is 300MB/s and all but the very fastest hard drives will be slower than that. So if there is a performance loss it will be very minor.

 

[Romulus]

Thanks for clarifying this for me. I appreciate it.

 

[pschatz100]

It is a good reliable board. If you are just now building the system, take a few minutes to make certain the bios and IPMI firmware are the latest versions.

 

[Romulus]

Thanks for the advice. I'll make sure the board bios and PMI firmware is updated. I am really excited about this build and looking forward to put it all together next week. Fingers crossed. Thanks for all your help.