Submitted 15 hours ago by paequ2@lemmy.today to selfhosted@lemmy.world
I’m looking at some common desktop motherboards and a lot of them only have like 2 or 4 SATA ports.
How do people connect 10 hard drive disks to something like this? Or do I have to purchase an Enterprise Server Motherboard to support this use case?
I’m trying to build my own NAS/media center and I want a ton of storage.
You're looking for an HBA card flashed into IT mode. There's a lot of LSI branded cards that can accomplish this. Just do a quick search on eBay and you'll see tons of different options.
Sorry, on mobile and couldn't find a good link for ya.
I have a PCI expansion card with 2x SAS ports on each, each of which can connect 4x SATA HDDs with a cable adapter.
I got a used Dell H200 for $30, because it’s good enough and the ports face UP instead of backwards, which is good for my itx case
Ignore the peeps saying not to use a regular pci-e card. Old recc, ASmedia ones are ideal good for 4-6 ports. 8+ you need to dabble in LSI shenanigans. The ASmedia ones use way less power and are worth it if you don’t need 8+ ports. You get all the features you want, they look and act like real SATA ports.
Check these guides (not just applicable to unraid, I don’t use unraid, but they cater towards a “ez straightforward” crowd so they make relatively concise and vetted info dumps):
https://forums.unraid.net/topic/102010-recommended-controllers-for-unraid/
Consider splitting your compute and storage. A dedicated NAS and the connect your compute to it using nfs or iSCSI.
There are M.2 adapters that split out 5 SATA ports. I don’t know about their chipsets and whether they require cooling though.
No, those are terrible.
Some pcie cards can add a buuunch more sata ports. There are also some m.2 cards that can do this.
PCIE cards exist that expand SATA data plugs. I don’t know the ins and outs though, as far as bandwidth goes. It also means you need a power supply that can provide enough power and daisy chained cords.
since you’re buying parts, you can specifically look for boards with 6-8 (more than that will require a ‘specialty’ board). 8 isn’t impossible to find. start a build on pcpartpicker, go straight to motherboards and filter 8 or more ‘SATA 6Gb/s Ports’, then sort low-to-high on price. you should find a msi pro am4 and an asus prime am5 that are quite reasonably priced and have multiple reputable vendors selling them.
otherwise you’re looking for an expansion card to add to a board you’ve already got or to expand one of those above for even more.
of course, you need the drive bays to hold them all, too. which can be harder to find at a reasonable and affordable price than motherboards and controller cards.
I think you'll want to factor in the exact use case at that scale. Does speed matter? Is "a ton" really a ton? Last regular computer mainboard I bought has 6 SATA ports. If I look at current harddrives, best price per gigabyte should be somewhere around 14TB drives. So given a RAID5, that's 70TB of storage, or 80TB if you go for 16TB hdds.
roofuskit@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
DO NOT USE REGULAR PCI-E CARDS THAT ADD SATA PORTS. They are unreliable. What you want is called a SAS Host Bus Adapter card and you want to get one that’s pre-flashed in IT mode.
The LSI 9207 is a good choice.
frongt@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
An HBA does not need to be flashed. A RAID controller does, so that it performs as an HBA and not a RAID controller.
candyman337@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
+1 on the LSI cards, I’ve been running one for a year or so now
LazerDickMcCheese@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
That sent me down a rabbit hole and I learned a lot, thank you
Prime@lemmy.sdf.org 7 hours ago
Unreliable?
black_flag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 hours ago
Good to know, thank you.
Rambomst@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I’m running 2 LSI cards, got an 8 and 16 for my NAS/mini rack, would recommend.