I've been researching all night (its 5am where I am right now) and, before I go to bed, I wanted to ask some questions before I wake up tomorrow and forget them all 
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I just got a rack that can store 20 drives, which has spurred this project. I have 16 drives which are a mix of 2TB western digital green drives (advanced format), 400gb western digital black drives, 1TB western digital green (not advanced format) and 2TB Samsung Eco drives (advanced format). I have all the basic system components. Its all hardware from an older gaming rig. The mobo is a Gigabyte ga-p35-ds4, the processor is a Q6600 and there is 8GB of ram.
After researching, it seems what I want is a SAS LSI2008 based card. I plan to do JBOD with the disks and use Drive bender for redundancy (on WHS). Nothing important will be on these drives, 90% is just media and the other 10% will be non-critical backups (basically stuff that is already backed up in 2 other places but are not easy to get to). If you could be so kind, I have 2 basic questions I am stuck on and could really use some help.
The first question is a recommendation on a card. I don't have a budget but since I am only buying a HBA and, I assume cables, I'd like to keep things under US$300-400 but its very flexible. What card would you recommend I use? Do I need a SAS expander for 20 drives (though I only have 16 right now, I'd like to leave room to add 4 more)? Or is there one card that can handle this? I do have 8 sata ports on the motherboard as well, but 2 of those ports have always been a bit flaky.
My second question is going to sound stupid, but how do I use SAS with SATA? It seems there is some kind of conversion cable or something? In everything I have read, its pretty much a given that everyone knows this, but I have no clue so please be easy on me. I hit Wikipedia but it was no help on how to do this practically. How many sata drives can be connected to a SAS port and how would I do that?
Thank you for any help!! I'm heading to bed now but I'll be back in 8-10 hours.
.I just got a rack that can store 20 drives, which has spurred this project
. I have 16 drives which are a mix of 2TB western digital green drives (advanced format), 400gb western digital black drives, 1TB western digital green (not advanced format) and 2TB Samsung Eco drives (advanced format). I have all the basic system components. Its all hardware from an older gaming rig. The mobo is a Gigabyte ga-p35-ds4, the processor is a Q6600 and there is 8GB of ram.After researching, it seems what I want is a SAS LSI2008 based card. I plan to do JBOD with the disks and use Drive bender for redundancy (on WHS). Nothing important will be on these drives, 90% is just media and the other 10% will be non-critical backups (basically stuff that is already backed up in 2 other places but are not easy to get to). If you could be so kind, I have 2 basic questions I am stuck on and could really use some help.
The first question is a recommendation on a card. I don't have a budget but since I am only buying a HBA and, I assume cables, I'd like to keep things under US$300-400 but its very flexible. What card would you recommend I use? Do I need a SAS expander for 20 drives (though I only have 16 right now, I'd like to leave room to add 4 more)? Or is there one card that can handle this? I do have 8 sata ports on the motherboard as well, but 2 of those ports have always been a bit flaky.
My second question is going to sound stupid, but how do I use SAS with SATA? It seems there is some kind of conversion cable or something? In everything I have read, its pretty much a given that everyone knows this, but I have no clue so please be easy on me. I hit Wikipedia but it was no help on how to do this practically. How many sata drives can be connected to a SAS port and how would I do that?
Thank you for any help!! I'm heading to bed now but I'll be back in 8-10 hours
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