[Official] Recommended SAS2 HBA (internal & external)

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30

General question, but is there anyway in unRAID to check the temperature of the HBA cards? I have the 9207-8i if it is card specific. Thanks!

31

No, there isn’t. Are you having any performance issues?

32

I’m having VERY random freezes (can take anywhere from hours to WEEKS) and trying to narrow it down. :frowning:

33

Put a fan pointed at the HBA, see if it resolves your issues.

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34

I have Dell PowerEdge R820
I am trying to connect 16 Seagate ST4000DM000 4TB SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB 5900 RPM 3.5 Drives

I bought 9202-16E Dell Lsi SAS9202-16E 6Gbps Dual Port HBA Low Profile card and installed it on the 2nd Riser which is the low profile riser. The card will post and I can enter the raid configuration.

I purchased for of these breakout cables to connect the drives HD Mini SAS 36 Pin SFF-8644 (Host) to 4 X SATA (Target)

The problem is that in the raid configuration under SAS Topography none of the drives are listed. I’ve tried three different external power supply units to power the drives. I seems like the drives never start spinning. I can’t seem to figure out what I’m missing. The 9202-16E says that it supports SATA drives.

I’ve also tried using 1 breakout cable and only connecting 4 drives but the same result. I’ve checked the cable plugged into the external port of the card clicks when I push it in. I’m not sure what else to do.

35

If the drives aren’t powering up you almost certainly need to do the 3.3 volt mod.

36

Thanks for the suggestion. It turns out to be a lot of bad luck.

I purchased 12 4TB drives on ebay that are 2014 drives and it turns out 4 of them are DOA. In addition, one of my modular SATA power cables was bad. Lastly, one of the SATA ports on the breakout cable is bad.

When I connected with working drives to working cables it all worked as expected.

37

That is quite the string of unfortunate events.

38

I was able to OBO a Dell HBA330 for $60. Flashing it is SAS3, which offers a touch of future-proofing once drives come back down from the moon. I opted for that vs a cheaper SAS2 8i. If you are using sata 6g 3.5’s, then SAS2 is plenty. If you ever might go SAS3 or all NVMe/SSD, then I recommend the Dell, and following STH’s flashing guide for it.

39

I recently picked up a HP H240 card. They are pretty cheap (like $25) and support SAS3.

It was difficult for me to get into the card to configure things since I don’t have an HP system, but it came configured at a HBA anyway, so there really wasn’t any configuration to do.

more info here:

40

Many thanks for the clear recommendation. Would you also recommend the LSA 9207-8i as the optimal card for the Dell PowerEdge T110 II?

41

Yes, I would!

42

Will the 9207-8i work well with X8SIL-F (NK1)? Or should I go for the 9210 that the guide suggests?

43

Both will work just fine.

44

Thanks for the great list, I’ve been doing a bunch of research on the subject as I get into it.

  1. Can you clarify the 4Kn support? Does it mean that the older generation cards simply won’t be able to work with (read/write) 4K sectors at all, and will be limited to 512n?

  2. And have you come across any PCIe 3.0 cards which are exclusively “4e”? I suppose the 9207-4i4e would do the job, I’m just curious.

45

The cards with external SAS ports seem to be cheaper than the ones with internal ones. Is there any reason one can’t get the external ports and then just run the wires back inside the case to save cost? There’s a very wide gap in the cost for 4 port/16 SATA heads LSI cards.

Thanks!

46

Is it possible? Yes. Is it recommended? Probably not. External to internal cables aren’t cheap, by the time you buy 4 of them you will have negated the savings buying an external card. Have you checked Bitdeals? They currently have an LSI 9211-8i for $30 with free shipping.

47

Beck (an olde timey musician) wrote a song about me. He may be the Kwisatz Haderach.
Last week, after soaking up y’alls’ wisdom, I ordered an HP Elitedesk 800 Mini G5-9500T figuring that device would manage Plex, possibly Blue Iris and HomeKit. The plan was to shoehorn a compatible PCIe riser if necessary to attach a sas controller with my 6 14TB HDD’s hanging off of it in a 2U rack drawer. Nothing fancy, nothing noisy, high WAF /twitch.

I’m trying to eat the elephant here. I think that I’ve just ordered a huge mouthful of parts reserved for savory foam connoisseurs and people who like to play with their food: the old EMC KTN-STL3. Admiral Ackbar has entered the chat…

EMC KTN-STL3: 15 Bays total (shipped with 13x 100GB Flash SSDs and 1x 300GB Drive). Shipping more expensive than the DAE.

So much for a low energy NAS. As the man said, soy un pendego.

Forging ahead.

It seems to me that I should now select the LSI 9206-16e to connect the Elitedesk 800 to the KTN-STL3. One PCIe slot to rule them all or something. Is that viable? The verbiage on the art of server chap’s description for this HBA describes Eye of Mordor heat being generated. I need an adult! Is the super high temps to be expected with casual NAS access or will He be summoned only when I back up my special cats folders?

Neither of these devices has been delivered so I can’t provide specific details yet. Reading all of the other KTN-STL3 posts here and elsewhere it sounds like this is a breech baby.

Thoughts? Feelings?

48

You were planning on using the m.2 M-key slot to an adapter to ribbon cable outside the case to an x8 PCIe riser to the HBA? With power from a line spliced into the KTN-STL3’s PSU? Is there a reason the NK4 or similar build wouldn’t work in your situation? You could still add the DAS to an NK4 NAS.

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49

This all seems too complicated. I don’t even get what you’re trying to do.

Which means, don’t do it.