Will an NVME to SATA HBA disable my MB Sata port?

[Night Watcher]

Hi,
I have an MPG B460I GAMING EDGE WIFI motherboard, you can find the official specs here.

I would like to Plug 5 SATA HDDs, one OS SATA SSD, and one Optane M.2 which I already bought.

The motherboard has 4 SATA ports, 1 M.2 Port, and one M.2 Optane compatible port.

I am using the PCIe expansion slot for a GPU.

I would need 6 SATA ports in total to connect my 5 HDDs and my OS. Hence I am in need of an adapter/HBA.

It says on the website "SATA4 will be unavailable when installing M.2 SATA SSD in the M2_1 slot."

My questions are:

1. If I plug an M.2 SATA drive into M2_1, it will disable SATA4, but if I plug an NVMe drive instead, will it also disable SATA4?

2. If a plug an M.2 HBA to SATA with a controller (possibly JMB585 or ASM1166), will it be considered an NVME or a SATA drive, and will it disable SATA4?

3. Should I get an M.2 HBA with 2 ports (like this one), or one with 5 ports (like this one).

4. If I get the HBA with 5 SATA ports, and I only use 2-3 ports, is the bandwidth equally split over the 5 ports, or is it only split over the ports I use?

Thank you

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just saying, optane drives are just a m.2 nvme drive. You don't need a specific type of port or system to use them. Also if this is for a home server, I'd probably skip the optane drive if it was me for many uses.

 

The m.2 sata adapter should work like a nvme drive as its a pcie device. I wouldn't worry about the bandwidth, its plenty for HDDs.

 

I'd also be tempted to go down to 4 HDDs unless your already using 20+ TB drives.

[Night Watcher]

8 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Just saying, optane drives are just a m.2 nvme drive. You don't need a specific type of port or system to use them. Also if this is for a home server, I'd probably skip the optane drive if it was me for many uses.

 

The m.2 sata adapter should work like a nvme drive as its a pcie device. I wouldn't worry about the bandwidth, its plenty for HDDs.

 

I'd also be tempted to go down to 4 HDDs unless your already using 20+ TB drives.

Hi, thank you for the prompt response, I mentioned Optane port because on the MB website they mentioned "Intel® 0ptane™ Memory Ready for M2_2 slot." I am not sure what that means, but might as well plug the Optane in the slot that says Optane.
Please note that I already have the Optane drive and the 5x 18TBs HDDs, and I would like to use them.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Night Watcher said:

Hi, thank you for the prompt response, I mentioned optane port because on the MB website they mentioned "Intel® 0ptane™ Memory Ready for M2_2 slot." whatever that means. Though yeah, doesn't matter where I plug stuff.
Please note that I already have the optane drive and the 5x 18TBs HDDs, and I would like to use them.

If your not using the intel caching feature(your no on a nas) It works like any other m.2 drive.

 

What os and filesystem are you using here?

 

Since you have the 5 drives this makes a lot of sense, and go for the m.2 to sata adapter. 

[Night Watcher]

I am using TrueNas.
As for the adapter, which one to use. Will the SATA4 port be disabled if I use an adapter? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Night Watcher said:

I am using TrueNas.
As for the adapter, which one to use. Will the SATA4 port be disabled if I use an adapter? 

I'm pretty sure it won't disable the port as its a pcie device. But it doesn't matter as you have more than enough sata ports.

 

What optane drive? You can use it as a l2arc, but it likely won't help that much here. 

[Night Watcher]

I have the M10 16GB Optane, and I plan to use it for SLOG and forcing synchronized write.
So will this adapter work?  Or should I play it safe and go for the one with 5 ports?

If I go with the one with 5 ports and only use 2, will I get the same performance as the one with 2 ports?

[Dutch_Master]

• Don't bother with the onboard SATA ports, only use the M.2 to 5/6x SATA adapter to connect your HDD's
• Insert said adapter board in the M.2-1 slot
• Insert the NVMe system OS drive in the M.2-2 slot
• Use the Optane drive in another build. Or buy a new ATX mainboard that offers you the connectivity you need.
• Alternatively, if using a 6x SATA adapter board, forego the NVMe OS drive and insert the Optane drive instead

HTH!

 

[edit: don't use the 2 port board, use this 6 port board instead: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005653706057.html  ]

[Night Watcher]

5 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

• Don't bother with the onboard SATA ports, only use the M.2 to 5/6x SATA adapter to connect your HDD's
• Insert said adapter board in the M.2-1 slot
• Insert the NVMe system OS drive in the M.2-2 slot
• Use the Optane drive in another build. Or buy a new ATX mainboard that offers you the connectivity you need.
• Alternatively, if using a 6x SATA adapter board, forego the NVMe OS drive and insert the Optane drive instead

HTH!

 

[edit: don't use the 2 port board, use this 6 port board instead: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005653706057.html  ]

• Why not use the onboard SATA ports? I would assume even if nvme is faster, the performance for HDDs on the onboard SATA should still be okay?
• I already have an SATA SSD that is not M.2 so I can't plug it into M.2-2

Regarding your edit, why shouldn't I use the 2 port board? Do you mean I might need more ports, or it's not a good adapter? Because the 2 port with the JM582 chip was recommended on the Unraid forums.

[Dutch_Master]

Both onboard and M.2 SATA ports are 6Gb/s. But there might be a latency issue as the chipset addresses the PCIe and onboard SATA ports differently. It's probably small, but would theoretically hurt performance on a ZFS install as the onboard drives are addressed at a different time to the drives connected via the PCIe adapter. The advise is to have all drives connect via the adapter to avoid the potential bottleneck, including your SATA OS drive.

 

Of course, if you choose to use the onboard SATA ports then by all means be my guest

[Night Watcher]

22 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

Both onboard and M.2 SATA ports are 6Gb/s. But there might be a latency issue as the chipset addresses the PCIe and onboard SATA ports differently. It's probably small, but would theoretically hurt performance on a ZFS install as the onboard drives are addressed at a different time to the drives connected via the PCIe adapter. The advise is to have all drives connect via the adapter to avoid the potential bottleneck, including your SATA OS drive.

 

Of course, if you choose to use the onboard SATA ports then by all means be my guest

I see, though, can you explain why the OS drive also has to be connected on the same adapter?
Also am I wrong for trusting the onboard chipset more than the aliexpress adapter?

[LIGISTX]

18 minutes ago, Night Watcher said:

I see, though, can you explain why the OS drive also has to be connected on the same adapter?
Also am I wrong for trusting the onboard chipset more than the aliexpress adapter?

There is no reason to plug the boot drive into the adapter. Truenas barely even hits the boot drive anyways, so even if there was a performance hit (I don’t think that is even true…) it wouldn’t matter. 
 

Why do you need an Optane SLOG? You probably don’t. And they key to truenas, as with any server, is keep things as simple as possible. Don’t throw hardware at it just because, all you’re doing is introducing potential failure modes. What reason do you believe you have for an Optane SLOG? Most importantly, what is the use case of this server, and what is your network speed? 

[Night Watcher]

1 minute ago, LIGISTX said:

There is no reason to plug the boot drive into the adapter. Truenas barely even hits the boot drive anyways, so even if there was a performance hit (I don’t think that is even true…) it wouldn’t matter. 
 

Why do you need an Optane SLOG? You probably don’t. And they key to truenas, as with any server, is keep things as simple as possible. Don’t throw hardware at it just because, all you’re doing is introducing potential failure modes. What reason do you believe you have for an Optane SLOG? Most importantly, what is the use case of this server, and what is your network speed? 

The electricity in the area I live in is not reliable. I have both an APS and a UPS system, yet those do sometimes fail, so I am trying to minimize the drop of a file being copied if that happens.
Use case for this server is Archiving, Storage, and Media Server. As for Network speed peak is 2.5GB/s, though probably less than that

[LIGISTX]

3 minutes ago, Night Watcher said:

The electricity in the area I live in is not reliable. I have both an APS and a UPS system, yet those do sometimes fail, so I am trying to minimize the drop of a file being copied if that happens.
Use case for this server is Archiving, Storage, and Media Server. As for Network speed peak is 2.5GB/s, though probably less than that

I wouldn't worry about this, especially not for a home server. the likleyhood of a file being not fully copied in flight that can not just be re-written once power is restored is extremly low. If you have a UPS for your server, your good to go. Even if the UPS only lasts a few seconds, the data being sent to it will be stopped, a few seconds would allow harddrives to fully write the data, and then whatever corruption there may be would be due to the file not being fully sent before power was lost to the network/machine sending the data.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[Night Watcher]

10 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

I wouldn't worry about this, especially not for a home server. the likleyhood of a file being not fully copied in flight that can not just be re-written once power is restored is extremly low. If you have a UPS for your server, your good to go. Even if the UPS only lasts a few seconds, the data being sent to it will be stopped, a few seconds would allow harddrives to fully write the data, and then whatever corruption there may be would be due to the file not being fully sent before power was lost to the network/machine sending the data.

 

Just my 2 cents.

UPS sometimes dies, not even a few seconds, I replace my UPS once a year, it's pretty bad.
Can you elaborate on what type of complexity and point of failure the Optane would cause? And since I already own one is there a better use for it?

[LIGISTX]

1 minute ago, Night Watcher said:

UPS sometimes dies, not even a few seconds, I replace my UPS once a year, it's pretty bad.
Can you elaborate on what type of complexity and point of failure the Optane would cause? And since I already own one is there a better use for it?

Instead of replacing it every year, if this is really an issue for you, I would just invest in a quliaty unit.

 

nVME SLOG won't cause any issues, I just am a proponent of not adding things you don't need. I could have an SSD based SLOG, SSD based L2ARC, SSD based special metadata vdev (I have half a dozen SSD's sitting on my desk collecting dust), but I don't add them because its just one more thing to think about, one more config setting to remember. For a home server, it probably isn't much of an issue. But if you have it, I suppose go ahead and use it.

[Night Watcher]

Understood, thank you.
Going to order the Aliexpress Adapter for the HDDs

[Electronics Wizardy]

52 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

There is no reason to plug the boot drive into the adapter. Truenas barely even hits the boot drive anyways, so even if there was a performance hit (I don’t think that is even true…) it wouldn’t matter. 
 

Why do you need an Optane SLOG? You probably don’t. And they key to truenas, as with any server, is keep things as simple as possible. Don’t throw hardware at it just because, all you’re doing is introducing potential failure modes. What reason do you believe you have for an Optane SLOG? Most importantly, what is the use case of this server, and what is your network speed? 

I will also note that a SLOG won't be used by SMB by default as its async writes. You can force sync if you really want it to use the slog.

[Night Watcher]

2 hours ago, Night Watcher said:

I have the M10 16GB Optane, and I plan to use it for SLOG and forcing synchronized write.
So will this adapter work?  Or should I play it safe and go for the one with 5 ports?

If I go with the one with 5 ports and only use 2, will I get the same performance as the one with 2 ports?

That is correct, as mentionned here.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, Night Watcher said:

I have the M10 16GB Optane, and I plan to use it for SLOG and forcing synchronized write.
So will this adapter work?  Or should I play it safe and go for the one with 5 ports?

If I go with the one with 5 ports and only use 2, will I get the same performance as the one with 2 ports?

I will note that the write speed on those optane drives is 150mB/s so it's pretty slow, and will drop your speed a decent amount here.

 

Also the endurance is about 370TB, and the drives will self destruct and go read only if you go over that. 

 

I'd skip the SLOG here, ZFS will handle the power outages just fine.

[mariushm]

I would consider using a M.2 to pci-e x4  or M.2 to pci-e x1 adapter card first, then you could have a low profile pci-e card with as many ports as you want.. or a standard height one if you don't use an itx case

 

example https://www.amazon.com/Expansion-Transform-Interface-Installation-Computers/dp/B0C84XTMHG/

 

pci-e x4 riser cable (opened at the back, so you can insert x8 cards ) https://www.amazon.com/10Gtek-Extension-Cable-Straight-Length/dp/B0B8HSKKH9/

 

 

[Night Watcher]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

I would consider using a M.2 to pci-e x4  or M.2 to pci-e x1 adapter card first, then you could have a low profile pci-e card with as many ports as you want.. or a standard height one if you don't use an itx case

 

example https://www.amazon.com/Expansion-Transform-Interface-Installation-Computers/dp/B0C84XTMHG/

 

pci-e x4 riser cable (opened at the back, so you can insert x8 cards ) https://www.amazon.com/10Gtek-Extension-Cable-Straight-Length/dp/B0B8HSKKH9/

 

 

Thank you, that is a possibility I might have to consider, in the meantime I hit a small wall with the current adapter I already have.
On another note, I got the JMB585 M.2 to 5 SATA ports, and it's not being detected by either TrueNas Core nor Scale. Any idea why? It should work

[Night Watcher]

I hit a blocker. To recap

I have an MPG B460I GAMING EDGE WIFI Motherboard with an Intel Core i3-10100 Processor. I also have 5x 18TB HDDs +SSD Bootdrive. And I need to connect them all.

I have 2x M.2 Ports, 4x SATA ports. And if I connect a SATA drive to the M.2 it will disable one of the SATA ports on the motherboard.

I got a adapter M.2 to 5x SATA that uses JMB585 chip, however the drives connected to it do not show up on Trunas (core/scale) nor the System UEFI.

 

I need to finish this system by Monday, and I am running out of ideas.

 

Option 1: Fix the adapter, maybe there is a setting in the bios I need to enable that I am missing?
Option 2: have the OS on an M.2 SSD, connect 4 of the drives to the SATA ports, and the 5th to some type of adapter that plugs into the M.2 slot

 

 

[LIGISTX]

2 hours ago, Night Watcher said:

I hit a blocker. To recap

I have an MPG B460I GAMING EDGE WIFI Motherboard with an Intel Core i3-10100 Processor. I also have 5x 18TB HDDs +SSD Bootdrive. And I need to connect them all.

I have 2x M.2 Ports, 4x SATA ports. And if I connect a SATA drive to the M.2 it will disable one of the SATA ports on the motherboard.

I got a adapter M.2 to 5x SATA that uses JMB585 chip, however the drives connected to it do not show up on Trunas (core/scale) nor the System UEFI.

 

I need to finish this system by Monday, and I am running out of ideas.

 

Option 1: Fix the adapter, maybe there is a setting in the bios I need to enable that I am missing?
Option 2: have the OS on an M.2 SSD, connect 4 of the drives to the SATA ports, and the 5th to some type of adapter that plugs into the M.2 slot

 

 

I don’t know anything about m.2 to sata cards, so I have no idea what might be wrong.

 

Do you truly need a GPU? If not, SAS HBA is the answer. 

[Night Watcher]

On 12/14/2023 at 5:01 AM, LIGISTX said:

I don’t know anything about m.2 to sata cards, so I have no idea what might be wrong.

 

Do you truly need a GPU? If not, SAS HBA is the answer. 

Well, turns out the JMB585 adapter was either non-compatible or faulty. I managed to get another one that worked, so here are my options:

1. Use the M.2 slot for an M.2 SSD as the OS drive. Plug 4 HDDs to the Motherboard's SATA Ports, and plug the 5th drive to a JMB582 (M.2 A+2 to 2x SATA ports) card connected in the wifi card slot, basically only using one of the SATA ports on that card.
2. Use ASM1166 card with 6x SATA ports, connect the 5 HDDs to it directly, and connect a SATA SSD to the Motherboard SATA port.

So should I go with option 1 where only one drive relies on the cheap adapter card, or option two where all the HDDs are on the same controller?