Are there any specific limitations/requirements? Any recommended models or things to look out for? I looked on Amazon, and they range from around $30 to $200, and I really have no criteria, and I want to spend as little as possible.
Comment on Am I corrupting my data?
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 2 days agoTo anyone reading, do NOT get a PCIe SATA card. Everything on the market is absolute crap that will make your life miserable.
Instead, get a used PCIe SAS card, preferably based on LSi. These should run about $50, and you may (depending on the model) need a $20 cable to connect it to SATA devices.
thelemonalex@lemmy.world 2 days ago
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
If it’s an LSI card then make sure it’s either been flashed into IT mode, is capable of being flashed into IT mode, or is relatively modern and has that option built in.
What you really want is an HBA, but HBAs can be expensive, a raid card flashed to act as an HBA is typically much cheaper. A 6 gbit SAS card will do 3gbit sata, and no hard drive should be writing more than 3gbit. If you want to do SSDs then find a relatively more modern 12 gbit SAS card which will do 6gb sata.
I guess also look out for the REALLY old ones that won’t do over like 3tb. But I bought one of those for $20 almost 10 years ago so that shouldn’t be a concern. Those are probably all in the trash by now.
thelemonalex@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Thank you very much for the info. In the case of Raid Cards that can be flashed, is there something I need to look out for, besides the speed? Only HDDs will be used, so speed isn’t a priority.
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
I don’t want to speak to your specific use case, as it’s outside of my wheelhouse. My main point was that SATA cards are a problem.
As for LSi SAS cards, there’s a lot of details that probably don’t (but could) matter to you. PCIe generation, connectors, lanes, etc. There are threads on various other homelab forums, truenas, unraid, etc. Some models (like the 9212-4i4e, meaning it has 4 internal and 4 external lanes) have native SATA ports that are convenient, but most will have a SAS connector or two. You’d need a matching (forward) breakout cable to connect to SATA. Note that there are several common connectors, with internal and external versions of each.
You can use the external connectors (e.g. SFF-8088) as long as you have a matching (e.g. SFF-8088 SAS-SATA) breakout cable, and are willing to route the cable accordingly. Internal connectors are simpler, but might be in lower supply.
If you just need a simple controller card to handle a few drives without major speed concerns, and it will not be the boot drive, here are the things you need to watch for:
- MUST be LSi, but it can be rebranded LSi. This includes certain cards from Dell and IBM, but not all.
- Must support Initiator Target (IT) mode. The alternative is Initiator RAID (IR) mode. This is nearly all, since most can be flashed to IT mode regardless
- Watch for counterfeits! There are a bunch of these out there. My best advice is to find IT recyclers on eBay. These cards are a dime a dozen in old, decommissioned servers. They’re eager to sell them to whomever wants them.
Also, make sure you can point a fan at it. They’re designed for rackmount server chassis, so desktop-style cases don’t usually have the airflow needed.
thelemonalex@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Thank you very much for the detailed information. I’ll look into eBay again, maybe I can find a good offer that works. I’m unsure how to choose the number of lanes. Does that relate to the number of drives it supports? Also, in terms of cooling, would any PC case fan be enough, if strapped onto the HBA?
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Kind of. They will be multiples of 4. Let’s say you got a gigantic 8i8e card, albeit unlikely. That would (probably) have 2 internal and 2 external SAS connectors. Your standard breakout cables will split each one into 4 SATA cables (up to 16 SATA ports if you used all 4 SAS ports and breakout cables), each running at full (SAS) speed.
But what if you were running an enterprise file server with a hundred drives, as many of these once were? You can’t cram dozens of these cards into a server, there aren’t enough PCIe slots/lanes. Well, there are SAS expansion cards, which basically act as a splitter. They will share those 4 lanes, potentially creating a bottleneck. But this is where SAS and SATA speeds differ- these are SAS lanes, which are (probably) double what SATA can do. So with expanders, you could attach 8 SATA drives to every 4 SAS lanes and still run at full speed. And if you need capacity more than speed, expanders allow you to split those 4 lanes to 24 drives. These are typically built into the drive backplane/DAS.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
I have a cheap PCIe card I bought and it works fine.
It cost like 10$ and has been rock solid. What is the issue?
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
The one I had would frequently drop the drives, wreaking havoc on my (software) RAID5. I later found out that it was splitting 2 ports into 4 in a way that completely broke spec.