SATA raid card?

Bezzaboy1234 · 9 Sep 2012 at 21:11

Hi guys,

So I recently purchased one of these for my small HTPC as 2.5inch drives are getting much larger and I figured 6x1tb Samsung M8 1tb's sounds great!

http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/node/1824

The problem however, Is that my small AMD motherboard only has 4 Sata ports on it. In total I realistically need 8 (6 in the 2.5 bay, 1x3.5inch in the 3.5 bay and an SSD for fast boot)

Is there a decent raid card or SATA controller card I can get that will help alleviate my problem? I have looked around and am sure I could really benefit from a RAID 5 setup (not too bothered by redundancy) as the HTPC only has games and movies on it.

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks

rb

Bezzaboy1234 · 9 Sep 2012 at 21:59

AMCC 3Ware 9500S-4LP SATA Raid Controller 128MB 4 Ports

If you google this and click the first link, Would this work? could someone explain some things about it as it is slightly confusing, Also is SAS and SATA backwards compatible?
I dont think the Sharkoon drive bay system is SAS but can I simply get a 1xSAS to 4xSATA cable and plug that into a SATA Raid card.

Or am I being stupid?

bremen1874 · 9 Sep 2012 at 23:09

A SAS controller will handle SATA drives. It won't work the other way round.

Do you have a PCI-X slot to plug that card into?

Bezzaboy1234 · 10 Sep 2012 at 19:39

I have a PCI-E 1x slot

and 2xpci slot

bremen1874 · 10 Sep 2012 at 20:04

PCI-X != PCI-E. Look at that card and then at your PCI-E slot.

IronWarrior · 10 Sep 2012 at 20:20

bremen1874 said:
PCI-X != PCI-E. Look at that card and then at your PCI-E slot.

PCI-X does not work in PCI-E, but it does work in PCI.

bremen1874 · 10 Sep 2012 at 20:27

IronWarrior said:
PCI-X does not work in PCI-E, but it does work in PCI.

But with a quarter of the bandwidth that card is designed to have. That particular card just has too many things against it to make it a good buy.

IronWarrior · 10 Sep 2012 at 23:06

bremen1874 said:
But with a quarter of the bandwidth that card is designed to have. That particular card just has too many things against it to make it a good buy.

Depends how he is going to be using it, I believe I just bought the same card second hand from a guy, the 3ware 9500S-8 PCI Raid Card which is only going to be used to give me more SATA room so I can store more video media, like my Anime and TV/Movie collection.

Speed isn't a issue, just need storage.

Bezzaboy1234 · 11 Sep 2012 at 14:13

IronWarrior said:
Depends how he is going to be using it, I believe I just bought the same card second hand from a guy, the 3ware 9500S-8 PCI Raid Card which is only going to be used to give me more SATA room so I can store more video media, like my Anime and TV/Movie collection.

Speed isn't a issue, just need storage.

Exactly how you are using it, I just need storage, Speed really isn't a big factor,

Just price and storage

EDIT: Pic of my current boards PCI ports, From what I understand PCI-X will fit in a PCI-E slot but not into my case as I only have space for a low profile PCI card
Also I'd rather have the 5570 in the PCI-E Slot so PCI prefferably