Internal SATA card for WHS?

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Modred189

Modred189

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I have maxed the 4 SATA ports on my current motherboard in my WHS. Is there a decent and cheap PCI or PCI-e anyone would recommend for adding more internal SATA ports to their WHS?
 
$100 - SuperMicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 PCI-X (PCI Compatible) 8 Port SATA Controller Card
$100 - SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI-Ex4 8 Port SATA Controller Card
$120 - Supermicro AOC-USAS-L8i PCI-Ex8 8 Port SATA Controller Card
 
lol. Thanks. I don't know if I need 8 ports. I'll look into their 2-4 port cards maybe. Is supermicro the brand to go to then?
 
Stupid question, but what's the point of those expensive >$100 cards if youre going to be using WHS and therefore no RAID?
 
Modred189 said:
lol. Thanks. I don't know if I need 8 ports. I'll look into their 2-4 port cards maybe. Is supermicro the brand to go to then?
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AFAIK, they really don't have 2-4 port cards. Those Supermicro cards are found in many WHS setups.
Old Hippie said:
Danny's got good taste.
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Thank you for the kinds words :D
dydx said:
Stupid question, but what's the point of those expensive >$100 cards if youre going to be using WHS and therefore no RAID?
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Well first and foremost: Those aren't RAID cards at all. Those Supermicro cards are just dumb storage controllers whose basic function is just to add more SATA ports to a PC.

Second, if you look around, those Supermicro cards are actually pretty cheap considering that you can get 8 SATA ports out of one card. There aren't many other cards that'll get you that many SATA ports at a low price in one single slot card. Sure you can get 4 of the controllers that Old Hippie uses to get 8 SATA ports but that takes 4 PCI slots.

Third, many people tend to use the Norco 4020 or 4220 server cases for their WHS setup. As such, the typical Silicon image based controllers (Like the Rosewill) aren't exactly suitable

Fourth, those Supermicro cards tends to have significatnyly better transfer speeds than the typical Silicon Image controllers like the Rosewill.

Fifth and finally, generally, Supermicro has better and more stable drivers for their hardware available.
 
Just to add a small bit of opinion here, saving a few dollars on a NAS generally equals a risk to your data. For most people using 2TB drives these days, 2TB of data is worth more than a few dollars saved on lower quality components. Heck 2TB is a LOT of data to lose. This is not the difference between a $250 and $500 video card where you may have to "live" with slightly lower resolution. Generally this is a <$100 difference to mitigate risk. The Super Micro controllers are known to be of fairly high quality.
 
Thanks for all the help folks. Looks like a more in-depth question than I thought.
Plus, after wrestling with WHS and my super-lame Uverse gateway, and being unable to get web access set up, I think I am going to wait for Vail. Just too much hassle at this point.
 
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In MAC and PC, pp use RAID0 out of PM and get over 220MB/sec

Lately there is driver-less hardware raid PM controller that guarantees over 220MB/sec with RAID5 (must use 7200rpm drive)

With WHS data is flow via GbE or 2xGbE, assume the PM transfer 35MB/sec (slow)

That speed can support more the 5x stream of BD.ISO

Of course the faster the better.. but what is the application!
 
DATOptic.Support said:
In MAC and PC, pp use RAID0 out of PM and get over 220MB/sec
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With which card?

DATOptic.Support said:
Lately there is driver-less hardware raid PM controller that guarantees over 220MB/sec with RAID5 (must use 7200rpm drive)
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That's not what you recommended though. You recommended software based PM controller that uses a chipset known for being fairly slow.

EDIT: @ DATOptic.Support
Your posts so far in the other threads remind me of a poster names "Firewire2". Any relations?
 
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DATOptic.Support said:
Here is the card will give you over 200MB/s in SW raid 0:
http://www.sansdigital.com/adapters/ha-dat-4espcie.html

You're right about the PM... it's slow but 45MB/sec RAID5 is easily obtain-able
This speed more than enough for WHS

One thing I don't get, with WHS application why that you need over 200MB/s transfer rate with RAID array?
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Ok, that's $195 for the Sans Digital PM. Compare that to the price tags of the Supermicro controllers I linked to which provides 8 SATA ports VS the 5 of your Sans Digital.

Your right that 45Mb/s is enough. But again, why pay for something slow (Silicon Image) when something faster is the same price or not that much more?

Correct me if I am wrong but your original Lacie 2Port ESATA card would have required you to buy two PMs separately? The cheapest port multipliers I've found costs $65. So two of those PMs plus the eSATA card would have costed a total of $180 for only 10 ports and probable slow performance. So why would that have been a better choice over a single Supermicro card?

Also, no one here has recommended RAID at all for WHS. So I don't see where you're coming from in regards to that.
 
Not to hijack the thread or anything, :p , but to be clear, my WHS is operating over a standard home wireless G network. I don't think anything faster than 54 mbps would be worth the extra money.
 
Danny
I'm just show you the SiI-3124 can transfer serious speed if you want to

But I recommend the SiI-3132 card: @ $24.00 and 2x SiI-3726 PM bridge @ $55.00/ea

Total cost is $134.00 - this solution needs a PCI express 1x, which is much more readily available

Where your solution is good but may not be viable to some system that does not have PCI-X or PCIe 4x / 8x

This is just another solution for different system, that is all

BTW, this is not a raid solution - It will shows 10x individual drives in WHS
 
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Thanks everyone for your help. It's got me narrowed down.

However, I think we can all see where this is going...
 
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