SATA port multipliers

Sans digital tr8m-b 8

Actually the enclosure has two PMs.

For more than 5 drives on a multiplier you have to run a different chip on it than the 5 port ones, I can't remember the designation, but I've never seen one on an actual product. How many drives are you trying to support?

If such a cheap (or reasonably priced) PM existed, everybody would be very happy.

Anyway there is no such a PM, 5 ports is the maximum currently.

Then there is not much price difference from adding 2 AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards (2 x 8 = 16 ports; 2 x $105 = $210) along with onboard SATA ports (usually 6). That's the reason why I got rid of PM solutions from my guide (overall performance is better than PM).

Except for the fact that you burn through your PCIe slots a lot faster using the x8 cards. May not be an issue if you have a lot of PCIe slots, but I only have 3. I have an AOC-SASLP-MV8 in my x4 slot, a SiI3124 4 port card (with port multipliers) in my x16 slot, and a SiI3132 2 port card in my x1 slot (plus 6 ICH10 on-board ports). The only adapter that doesn't show good throughput is the SiI3132, though I'm not sure if it's the adapter, or the external enclosure connected to it, or the fact that those drives are in a hardware mirror). But despite the fact that it's reported throughput is about 1/6 of all the other hosts, it's still many times more than needed to stream blu-ray, so to me, it's all moot. The only time bandwidth is a concern is when I'm building parity (using FlexRAID), but my build times seem as good or better than others I've seen reported, so I'm not worried about it (besides, you build once, then it updates nightly while I'm asleep, so performance doesn't matter).

The only negative I have with the SiI3124 + port multipliers is there is NO SMART reporting. I do get SMART with the AOC-SASLP-MV8, but it's been more problematic than the SiI3124. It has a fairly well known issue with dropping disks under certain situations, which I've had some problems with (though I have been able to at least minimize it).

with the transition towards sata 6gb/s surely vendors are now pushing these PM through - would help the b/w issue.

all the port multipliers I've seen cots about $60, that is $12.50 per port plus the Sata card, which is going to add ~$2.50 per port.. You can get PCI four port sata 2 software cards for about $40 which is only $10 per port, and just stick as many of them as you can fit on your board. If you are running a separate media server like I am, just run it on an old system. Mine is an nForce 3 motherboard with 6 PCI slots, that would allow for 24 drives. I've personally streamed a pair of 1080P movies off a single PCI raid card running windows integrated software raid 5 with no problems or stutters at all.

There are a several intel 4 series motherboards for socket 775 that would allow you to run dual or quad core cpus with more than enough DDR2 and still have 5 PCI slots, that's 20 drives, plus they have 6 on board, subtract one for boot drive and one for optical and you've got 24 drives, drop in relatively well drives, that'll give you 48TB max, that should last a VERY long time. If you need more space than that you really need to up your budget by a couple grand to be honest.

Or, if you don't mind stepping back in time a small bit, you can grad a supermicro board that has four PCI-X slots and supermicro raid cards with 8 SATA 2 each, and still have 6 on board SATA 2 ports, a PCIe x4 and PCIe x8 slots for more raid cards later on, you could easily get 40+ SATA2 ports out of that board with raid cards.

It's possible for less than that to get a SAS controller and a SAS expander get up to twice as many SAS/SATS ports for drives and up to 16x the performance(if you dual link a 6gb controller).

I prefer something like the 5-Port HPM-XA



It does not use an actual slot, but simply needs a case slot to affix it. I have a micro-atx board but a full size case, which means I have a lot of free case slots where the mobo does not reach. All it needs is a floppy drive power connector.

Since my extra hard drives are all storage for movies, and I only have one TV, I will only ever access one drive at a time. I can turn one on board SATA port into five SATA ports. I just have to make sure the OS drive and the optical drive keeps their own dedicated ports...easy to do since the mobo has six onbard SATA ports built in.

My case will be full LONG before I run out of ports.

Cybersage, where did you buy that card from? how much is it?

Addonics.

Sorry, the same link as cybrsage. You can buy it (part number AD5HPMSXA) directly from Addonics store ($89) or may be able to find it cheaper somewhere else.

A normal PM, e.g. AD5SAPM, requires a PM-aware SATA port, that is cheaper.

Thanks.

I went with a more future proof version. Sure, it is not SATA-3, but I can use it in any system without having to hope the port is PM aware.