RAID card issue/help

T1m4 · June 17, 2016

Hi,

Im currently building a home server mostly for plex and as a home cloud for when my dad is travelling he can access it anywhere. Its running windows 10 which may not be the best choice of OS but its what is working for me currently and its easy if i need to talk my girlfriend through making sure everything is on and working so she can watch plex when I'm not there!!

The issue i have/had is I bought a Highpoint 2680SGL raid card which fits nicely inside of the case a Silverstone DS380 but the drives would randomly drop off the card once the web gui was installed and wouldnt come back until the system was rebooted. There is no RAID on the server all the drives are in JBOD.

What I'm looking for is a card that will fit inside this case but will also allow the drives to spin down when idle (have heard good things about the LSI 9211-8i flashed to IT mode, but not sure if it will fit?)

So my question is whats the best way to run at least 8 HDD"s potentially up to 12 and one SSD that will allow the drives to spin down and put the system to sleep and allow it to wake up again and not lose any drives from the system?

Many Thanks,

Tim

Electronics Wizardy · June 17, 2016

You can get a 9211 8i and usse it fine. Its a low profile card as well. If you need more storage, you can always use a sas ex pander. Also id check your drives as it could also be a problem with the hdds.

Dark · June 18, 2016

I ran the same case with an HP P410 cached raid card and it was great. The card is cheap and only requires that your motherboard allows you to disable legacy rom (so it doesn't try and boot with the card, halting your boot process).

https://www.amazon.com/HP-462864-B21-Smart-2-port-Controller/dp/B001S2PZ5Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1466258110&sr=8-2&keywords=hp+p410

You'll need that card and two mini-sas to sata adapters (which will give you 8 sata ports). Make sure your OS drive is connected directly to the motherboard and not the raid card. You'll need to install HP's utility to configure the array.

T1m4 · June 18, 2016

Thanks for the reply's. Do you have any idea why the drives would drop of the RocketRAID 2680SGL when the computer wake from sleep? It only seamed to happen when the rocket RAID web management was installed but this meant I couldn't put the drives to sleep?

Dark · June 20, 2016

On 6/18/2016 at 6:04 PM, T1m4 said:

Thanks for the reply's. Do you have any idea why the drives would drop of the RocketRAID 2680SGL when the computer wake from sleep? It only seamed to happen when the rocket RAID web management was installed but this meant I couldn't put the drives to sleep?

Not sure but have you tried using hibernate instead of sleep? If anything, just to see if that changes anything upon wake.

T1m4 · June 21, 2016

I haven't tried that. However, the drives would sometimes just drop off even when the computer was running, but this one happened when the management software was installed. I have done some research and it looks like the 2680sgl has some issues with windows power management including drive spin down. I have returned the 2680, so it looks like I need a different card, any suggestions? I am only looking for a HBA card no raid functions but will allow the drives to go to sleep when not in use.

Thanks