JBOD versus regular SATA

[Anteaus]

I've maxed out the internet SATA ports on my motherboard and need to add a controller for more drives. The controller needs to be compatible with both Windows and Linux. I'm not using any RAID as of this point and have no desire to. All of my drives are independent.

I'm currently looking at controllers and have been eyeing some SAS/SATA controllers. The LSI 9211-4i is one such card. I initially looked at SATA only controllers but didn't like what I saw.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118114

Would something like this be suitable or does anyone have any suggestions? I'm a little out of my element here. I know that this card supports JBOD but I'm not sure how that works. Basically, I just want a card that will let me see my drives individually like I'm used to and have native compatibility with Linux. Performance is not as big a priority since these are large storage drives in a non-raid environment. Four to six ports would be ideal

Thoughts? Thanks in advance.

 

[master_shake_]

for the price and what you are using it for this is the better choice.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2&cm_re=supermicro_sas-_-16-101-792-_-Product

it comes with the full height pci bracket installed.

 

[Anteaus]

for the price and what you are using it for this is the better choice.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2&cm_re=supermicro_sas-_-16-101-792-_-Product

it comes with the full height pci bracket installed.

Thanks that really looks like the perfect card for my use. A quick question though rehashing on my earlier post. In this case, does JBOD mean that I can choose to have it pass all 8 drives onto the OS individually or as an alternative have the option to combined them all into one logical drive?

Edit: The only downside is that it is PCIEX8 which will eat up my one real PCIEX16 slot (I have onboard video). My other PCIEX16 slot is running at 4X will won't be adequate. I guess I can forget about upgrading the video which I was going to do to juice up its HTPC capabilities. Oh well.

 

[master_shake_]

you can use them as pass through drives or you can have windows make them one logical drive yes.

what board are you using?

 

[Anteaus]

you can use them as pass through drives or you can have windows make them one logical drive yes.

what board are you using?

I'm running a i5-4570S on a Gigabyte GA-Z87M-D3H as a headless server right now. I was running Debian Server for awhile but now it's running Windows 8.1. Likely will return to linux which is why linux compatibility with the controller is a necessity.

 

[master_shake_]

storage spaces is supposed to be great on windows 8, 8.1.

never used it though.

 

[Anteaus]

storage spaces is supposed to be great on windows 8, 8.1.

never used it though.

Yes, though I've never been a fan of of that style of pooling drives due to how I back things up. Each of my server storage drives has a matching external backup drive, so if one of my drives dies not only does it not affect any other drive I also know exactly which files were lost. I will likely waste more space than if I pooled them; however, it keeps my backup routines very simple. I dislike spanning backup drives.

I also have less power usage and wear and tear since only the drives in use will ever spin up. Not saying it's the best way to go, but it works for me.

 

[therealnickdanger]

On my RAID card (ARC-1222), JBOD is the equivalent of the passthrough function. I stopped bothering with hardware RAID a couple years ago and opted to use pooling software (StableBit) and I'll never go back to hardware. It's just so easy and quick.