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A8N-SLI Premium and Silicon Image 3726 SATA Port Multiplier, Compatible?

G

geogecko

Member
I am trying to find out if my ASUS A8N-SLI Premium is compatible with a Silicon Image SiI 3726 SATA port multiplier (1 to 5). It requires an eSATA cable (which I'm also not familiar with), and eSATA compatible port on the motherboard. I cannot seem to find anything related to this in the user manual, nor online. I was going to e-mail support, but the online form keeps saying there are too many people connected.

Anyone know if this motherboard supports eSATA?
 
Hmmm, you've got potentially eight SATA ports on this MB, and you're looking to add five more ?

The connectors for the Drives look the same, but the external (eSATA) cable is different.

You'll probably need a fairly hefty Power Supply to run all that.

 
Ha, ha. Probably should explain a little bit. I'm using this motherboard in a HTPC HeatSync case by A-Tech Fabrication. They have recently come out with a Mass Storage case, called the 8X, which holds a power supply, and 8 SATA drives. My desired connection between this 8X case, and my HTPC, is with two port multiplier cards (using only 4 of the ports on each card) in the 8X case, and then connecting one SATA cable from each card, to a port on the motherboard in the HTPC. This motherboard, as you know, comes with a PCI bracket with 2 SATA ports on it, which then get connected into the motherboard. What I'm wondering, is if the eSATA cable can plug into this bracket, and if the ports on the motherboard support having more than one device (port multiplier) on one SATA cable. I'd hate to buy the port multiplier cards (about $25 each), and find out I will also need a PCI-E card to provide the eSATA support.

A lot of people will probably say, 4 drives on one SATA port? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of 3.0Gbps? Well, right now, no. The reason is that current hard drives are only capable of putting out about 60Mbytes/s of data, so you have to get at least 4 drives on one 3.0Gbps port, before you *could* even approach that limit.

Documentation seems pretty lax on these things, but mainly on the ASUS motherboard. I may need to dig into the nForce4 (or the Silicon Image RAID controller) chip in order to determine what I need to know. I wonder how much documentation nVidia provides on that chip...

Thanks for taking a look.
 
Originally posted by: geogecko
Ha, ha. Probably should explain a little bit....
Click to expand...

Excellent description of the issue! I sure would like to know the same thing. Which raid controllers in general support multiplier cards?

Additionally, this is a potentially significantly higher performance and less expensive 🙂solution for putting together a small to large RAID device than getting one of the large RAID cards from 3Ware or Promise.

 
Yes. Using a 4 four port PCI eSATAII HBA such as Silicon Image SiI 3124 together with 4 Silicon Image SiI 3726 port multipliers would support up to twenty SATA hard drives in four groups of five. Of course a cheaper and more consumer oriented solution would be a single port eSATAII card and a single Port Multiplier in a five disc drive case.

Description of technology: http://store.yahoo.com/cooldrives/silicon-image-port-multiplier-sil-3726.html
SiI 3124: http://store.yahoo.com/cooldrives/saii3g4espcc.html
SiI 3726: http://store.yahoo.com/cooldrives/cosapomubrso.html
5 Disc Drive Case: http://store.yahoo.com/cooldrives/saiipomu55hd.html

 
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