whats the best way to add like a dozen sata ports to a computer?

[shrinkydinx]

ive been looking at "SAS" but i dont really understand it... i found this card - http://www.amazon.com/Lsisas-068E-Raid-16MB-Pcie/dp/B000X4QDMW

and i was wondering, if i bought that, what else would i need to connect 12-16 hard drives to it? (it says it supports 122...?)

or is there a better solution?

i dont need RAID or hot-swap... and i'd prefer an internal solution


thx bros

[JCLW]

SAS is Serial Attached SCSI. As a bonus, SAS controllers can also control SATA drives.

Most SAS and SATA support "port multipliers". Think of a port multiplier as the equivalent of a USB port. You have one "upstream" port that plugs into the SAS/SATA controller, and multiple "downstream" ports that the drives get plugged into.

intel ICHR (ie: "southbridge") controllers support port multipliers as well. So if you have a fairly modern motherboard with an ICH9R or ICH10R controller, you should just be able to plug a couple of port multipliers into it.

Something like: http://www.cooldrives.com/cosapomubrso.html
http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.asp

[Neuromancer]

You can also get SAS to SATA cables. plugs into sas port and supports 4 SATA drives.

[jason4207]

What are you trying to do overall?

Are you building a file server?

[shrinkydinx]

What are you trying to do overall?

Are you building a file server?yep, just a big server for all my media, nothing fancy, just really needs to be able to stream HD.

[shrinkydinx]

SAS is Serial Attached SCSI. As a bonus, SAS controllers can also control SATA drives.

Most SAS and SATA support "port multipliers". Think of a port multiplier as the equivalent of a USB port. You have one "upstream" port that plugs into the SAS/SATA controller, and multiple "downstream" ports that the drives get plugged into.

intel ICHR (ie: "southbridge") controllers support port multipliers as well. So if you have a fairly modern motherboard with an ICH9R or ICH10R controller, you should just be able to plug a couple of port multipliers into it.

Something like: http://www.cooldrives.com/cosapomubrso.html
http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.aspso fairly modern motherboards would be able to support plugging one of those into a normal sata port on the board?

this is the mobo i have in my amazon.com cart right now: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B001HH2WE2/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance



edit: how does the thing in the cooldrives link hook up to my mobo?

[Dermen]

I would look into the Dell SAS 6/i controller. It is similar to the popular Dell Perc 5/6 controllers except no raid. It would give you 8 SataII ports, plus the 8 on the MB for a total of 16.

I've read port multipliers can sometimes can be picky about what controllers they will work with and all the drives connected to a multiplier share the bandwidth of one port. You would need two 5-port multipliers to get the same number of ports that an 8 port controller like the Dell SAS 6/i would add.

[BossBorot]

The most frequently used cards are the supermicro AOC-SAT-MV8 (8x Sata pci), supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 (2x SAS to 8x Sata 4x pci-e), and the Dell cards (Perc i5, Perc i6, SAS i6).

[shrinkydinx]

it looks like the mobo i picked has 1ch10r...

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2919

...does that mean i can buy this...

http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.asp

...and use a bunch of regular old sata cables to hook 5 HDDs to one sata port on the mobo?

[JCLW]

intel claims port multiplier support on the ICH10R so it should work. But maybe send Addonics an email and ask first.

[Dermen]

Compatible with Host Controllers using the SiI3124 and SiI3132 chipset

This makes me think it won't work with ICH10R.

[jason4207]

Have you decided on an OS yet? If you haven't seen it yet, you should check out unRAID to see if it's something that might meet your needs. I'm using it with good results; streaming 1080p mkv's to my 3 PCs simultaneously w/o any issues.

http://lime-technology.com/technology

[jediman]

if you are looking at unraid try looking at flex raid as well. free but doesn't parity live and requires (allows depending on how you look at it) an OS.

[jediman]

actually. I'm trying to find one of these as well so I'm going to bump. I'm not interested in port multipliers or raid cards. There seem to be 4x sata pci cards for around 30 dollars and 2xusb3 and 2xsata3 cards that use 4x pcie, but what i'd really like is a 4x-8x pcie card that doesn't support raid. I can't imagine that would cost more than 100.