Which HBA?

[johnt]

I have a NAS with four drives right now. I am planning on purchasing more drives soon and I am going to run out of SATA ports on my motherboard. So I am looking into an HBA to add more drives.

 

I've been looking at LSI HBA's (which are extremely difficult to find, btw). But I am getting stuck between cards that report a bandwidth of 6 or 12 gbps. I'm also not sure if I need SAS drives to take advantage of 12 gbps, or if I can transfer between two 6 gbps devices at the same time to "saturate" the bandwidth. Would I benefit at all from an HBA card with 12 gbps, one that uses a SAS3008 controller for example, in terms of transfer speeds if I strictly plan to purchase SATA3 drives?

 

My intent is to purchase more spinners and a pair of SSDs.

[RONOTHAN##]

3 minutes ago, johnt said:

Would I benefit at all from an HBA card with 12 gbps, one that uses a SAS3008 controller for example, in terms of transfer speeds if I strictly plan to purchase SATA3 drives?

I think theoretically yes if you're using a SAS backplane that shares bandwidth between drives, but for the most part no. 

 

6 minutes ago, johnt said:

I've been looking at LSI HBA's (which are extremely difficult to find, btw).

You sure? I've found them pretty easily on eBay for cheap. Personally my server is using a Supermicro branded LSI 9207-8i (SAS2308 controller) and it's working perfectly fine, and it was $18 on eBay. There might be cheaper ones as well, that's just the one I bought about a year ago. 

[Motifator]

Yeah, LSI SAS controller aren't... exactly hard to find. They're all over places. Ebay, other websites, or even some physical stores that sell second hand computer gear... seems to me like you're looking at the wrong places.

[voyager_]

I got mine off Ebay too, I have a LSI 9207-8i already in IT mode in each server and they were easy to find for relatively cheap.

[Electronics Wizardy]

The 12gbit won't matter almost all of the time with HDDs, but what backplane and drive setup are you using? 

 

I'd stay away form the 92xx series controllers these days and get a 93xx as 92xx controllers are losing software support it seems.

[johnt]

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

You sure?

Positive! LOL it is a struggle because they seem to be made by several companies, and stories of counterfeit products are abundant. I just checked eBay for the 9300-16i and those seem to be more controlled. The 9300-8i is a free for all, even though it is the one I am considering. I mean what is Inspur and Fujitsu? Are they reliable? I've heard of Fujitsu before, but Inspur doesn't seem to cater to the masses at all.

 

1 hour ago, Motifator said:

seems to me like you're looking at the wrong places

I can't argue with this. I would also add that I am not presently clear on what I should purchase. The card manufacturers are very confusing.

 

48 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The 12gbit won't matter almost all of the time with HDDs, but what backplane and drive setup are you using? 

 

I'd stay away form the 92xx series controllers these days and get a 93xx as 92xx controllers are losing software support it seems.

I don't have a backplane. I was looking at the cases for multiple drives, but then I found a new Define R5 for $75 and it won the argument. I have four WD 3.5 purple drives that I bought used just for testing. But a NAS/server has proven beyond useful in my life and so the project has significantly morphed. My goal is to purchase WD reds, probably in the 10 to 20 TB range as these smaller capacity drives start failing on me, or when they go on sale, whichever comes first. So the drives would be plugged directly to the HBA. The SSDs would also be connected to the HBA also. Right now it is all working on a Windows 11 Pro machine that suits my needs. I use software to mirror the drives each night... RAID in general makes me nervous so I have actively avoided it.

 

Thank you for suggesting the 93xx cards!

[johnt]

Are the Fujitsu cards reliable? 

[johnt]

9 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I'd stay away form the 92xx series controllers these days and get a 93xx as 92xx controllers are losing software support it seems.

Do you think there is any similar benefit in terms of software support to consider the 94xx series instead of the 93xx? I've been doing some more research and it's a lot easier to find these devices now that I know how they are designated