4 or 8-Port SATA Card Recommendation?

[PeteCress]

WHS hosting SageTV, currently using six drives.

My mobo's SATA connectors are maxed out and I'd like to add 2 more drives and have at least one connector left over for the DVD drive I recently disconnected to make room for the sixth SATA HD.

I do not intend to do RAID.

Can anybody recommend a 4 or 8-port SATA card?

PCI Express 2.0 x 16, PCI Express x 1, or plain old PCI.

[MattHelm]

I like my Addonics cards, but the best they make is only 4 port. But, looks like all theirs are for external drive bays. They list as RAID, but all will work without the RAID software (I think).

They also sell port multipliers:
http://www.addonics.com/products/hos...d4sr5hpmus.asp

I know someone a while back was suggesting them, and with SATA II, you have more than enough bandwidth for 2 drives per port. I haven't used any, as I only have 3 drives per recording system so far.

[Bal]

Heres what ya need...

Supermicro
AOC-SASLP-MV8

I personally have not tried it but read it works well.

[Savage1701]

I like 3Ware cards. If you are not going to move past 32-bit Vista, 32-bit Windows, or 64-bit Windows XP, you can pick up some great deals on 9590SE series cards. They also use x4 electrical lanes but will fit in a physical x8 or x16 slot, support BBU's, and have a good amount of RAM cache on them.

Try to stay away from PCI-based cards as you will burn a ton of PCI bandwidth running them. By contrast, a single x1 lane has almost twice (250MB/s or 2.5Gbps) the bandwidth of a 32-bit PCI slot (what you see unless you use servers. PCI-X is a whole different animal). And frequently all those PCI slots in an older computer divide up that available bandwidth (133MB/s) amongst themselves. If you have to go PCI, the 9500 (but not the 9550) 3Ware cards work in 32-bit 33MHz standard PCI slots.

It's hard to get cards with more than 4 ports on an x1-lane card as they can no longer keep up with the sustained speed of fast arrays under their control. x1 lane cards frequently lack RAM cache as well, and will lean on your CPU for some of their functions, especially parity calculations ( "soft RAID" or "fake RAID" ).

You can get BIOS conflicts. At the very least, disable all boot BIOS's except the controller you are booting off of.

Don't expect a SATA DVD drive to work on a RAID controller.

I am leery of Highpoint and Promise. They don't have good tech support. I have heard so-so things on Areca. I own about a dozen 3Ware cards. They answer their calls and respond to their emails. Perq cards only tend to work with Dell computers, and Accusys is hard to find parts for. You could look at LSI (they also just bought 3Ware out from AMCC).

I have yet to see a RAID card that needs more than x8 electrical lanes. That's theoretically 2000MB per second. Nothing can take that, let alone an x16 controller that could theoretically move 4000MB/s. The parity processors on the cards themselves could never keep up with x16 electrical lanes, let alone the rest of the system. SSD's may change that at some point.

BTW, if you do buy a RAID card with BBU, be sure to always disconnect the battery before you do ANYTHING to it or you can fry the card or BBU controller. Even if the computer is unplugged, the card is still hot. And it will be hot literally forever, since LiIon batteries get shut down by their BBU controllers before they discharge to zero volts.

Hope that helps.

[petereader]

I've been using the Highpoint RocketRaid 2320 (pci-e, 8-port SATA)for about 3 years and it has been rock solid.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816115026

Considering that you won't be using the RAID capabilities, that card may be a bit overpriced, but they do have a cheaper 4 port pci card here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816115015

[mayamaniac]

There were already a few good suggestions from your PC Case thread:

http://www.cooldrives.com/8-channel-...-pci-card.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815121009

For 4 ports non RAID, I have own a few Promise TX4 cards and they worked well:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816102065

[paulbeers]

I have been using a silicon Image SiI3114 softraid controller simply for the SATA ports (not using the RAID functionality) in my Sage server paired with FlexRaid. Seems to be working well and I think I only paid like $30 for it. I will have to say that if I was trying to serve more bandwidth intensive files than DVD VOB's, I probably would have gone with something that isn't on the PCI bus.

With that said, I am planning to go to a true hardware raid setup here soon (with 6 1.5TB drives).

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

There were already a few good suggestions from your PC Case thread:

http://www.cooldrives.com/8-channel-...-pci-card.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815121009

Believe-it-or-not, I actually ordered something very much like - or maybe identical to the second one.

Turned out tb the wrong slot standard. WTF is "PCI-X133MHz " ?? -)

If I'd looked at the pix for about 10 seconds and had my IQ above room temperature, I could have seen that the contact strip bore no resemblance to anything on my mobo.

NewEgg want's 15% "restocking" for a straight-up refund, so I'm sniffing around, trying to find something else to replace it with when I return it.

PCI Express 2.0 x 16, PCI Express x 1, or plain old PCI.

[PLUCKYHD]

Why not go esata with external enlcosures that is what i did.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by PeteCress

Believe-it-or-not, I actually ordered something very much like - or maybe identical to the second one.

Turned out tb the wrong slot standard. WTF is "PCI-X133MHz " ?? -)

If I'd looked at the pix for about 10 seconds and had my IQ above room temperature, I could have seen that the contact strip bore no resemblance to anything on my mobo.

NewEgg want's 15% "restocking" for a straight-up refund, so I'm sniffing around, trying to find something else to replace it with when I return it.

PCI Express 2.0 x 16, PCI Express x 1, or plain old PCI.

I didn't even catch that. PCI-X is a different standard that was adopted by Apple for their early G5 Mac Pros. They have switched to PCI-Express when they switched to Intel Processors. So I guess PCI-X is defunct now.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by Savage1701

I like 3Ware cards. If you are not going to move past 32-bit Vista, 32-bit Windows, or 64-bit Windows XP, you can pick up some great deals on 9590SE series cards. They also use x4 electrical lanes but will fit in a physical x8 or x16 slot, support BBU's, and have a good amount of RAM cache on them.

Would this one be in the ballpark: http://tinyurl.com/yv6qj9

I'm assuming I can just run it without RAID ("RAID 0"?)

[mayamaniac]

If you wanna spend less, I think you should bite the 15% restocking fee and return it. I found this Supermicron AOC-USAS-L8i. They seem to run about $130.

Some pics of it in action:
http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/8632/insidern5.png
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/1944/hddmv6.png

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

If you wanna spend less, I think you should bite the 15% restocking fee and return it. I found this Supermicron AOC-USAS-L8i. They seem to run about $130.

Some pics of it in action:
http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/8632/insidern5.png
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/1944/hddmv6.png

Muy sano installation.

Is that the Norco case?

If so, do you run it on it's side?

[mayamaniac]

It's a Coolermaster Stacker 810.

I found the pics here.

[heffe2001]

Just skip all the low-end cards, no-namers and all that, and skip the really expensive raid cards, and go for the Adaptec 1430sa (Newegg. It'll work raid or non-raid, you can get 'em on ebay new for about 89 or less, and it'll work in your 16x PCIE slot fine (I'm using 2 now). It's a fast card, from a reputable manufacturer, and has pretty good universal support as far as drivers.

[Savage1701]

Pete - you may be able to use that PCI-X card in your PCI slot. PCI-X is just (for the most part) PCI but 64 bits and running at 66MHz (uncommon), 100MHz or 133MHz. A lot of PCI-X cards are backward compatible to PCI but you lose the speed, of course, as PCI-X is much faster, but nowhere near PCI-Express.

Also, the 9650SE is a great choice. It will run with Vista 32/64 bit and probably Win7, as well as 32/64 XP.

You can get it on Ebay used for far less. I would look at the 8-port low profile version as well. It adds little to the cost. I've even seen the 12-port versions go for that price. All 9590SE, 9550SX (PCI-X), 9650SE, and 9690 SAS controllers use a common BBU unit as well, which is nice.

Finally, of course, no disrespect to anyone who is using Highpoint or Promise. I've got a $25 x1 Rosewill card that has given me zero grief and happens to be the only one I've ever found that will run iRam RAM drive cards.

Adaptec can be a great card, as can SuperMicro proprietary cards that run on their ZCR RAID slots in certain of their motherboards.

[stevech]

what about SATA port replicators?

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by stevech

what about SATA port replicators?

I haven't gone there bc I'm clueless on the performance implications.

Also, the ones I've seen so far seem tb oriented towards serving external drives.

[topperdude]

Originally Posted by Savage1701

Finally, of course, no disrespect to anyone who is using Highpoint or Promise. I've got a $25 x1 Rosewill card that has given me zero grief and happens to be the only one I've ever found that will run iRam RAM drive cards.

Is it this Rosewill card? Dont mean to hijack this thread but I've been looking for a SATA card as well (preferably PCI) and dont plan on using RAID nor do I have the budget for most of the other cards mentioned in this thread. BTW, above card is again on sale at newegg for $25 with code EMCLWLR23 for those subscribing to their newsletter.

Thanks,
-Topper

[Savage1701]

Yeah, it's like $25, has 2 external, 2 internal (your choice, 2 max at once) and an IDE connector I don't use and don't know if you can use with SATA. It uses JMicron controllers but the little critter rocks. It's given me less headaches than cards costing 30X as much.