This RAID Card is Terrible?

[EXCellR8]

Heh, neat trick on the slot.

Slightly unrelated... how much power does a typical spindle drive use? The power supply on this bench system is only 150w and it's got four WD Red's attached to a single molex with splitters lol.

 

[mxnerd]

how much power does a typical spindle drive use? .

WD Red uses less than 10W.

https://www.wdc.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-800002.pdf

https://www.wdc.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-800022.pdf

But I hate heat. If I were you, I'll replace 4 x 2TB drives (if that's what you have) with 2 x 4TB drives.

 

[EXCellR8]

Thanks!

This board has a total of 4 SATA 6Gbps ports but no onboard RAID controller. I picked up a cheap mini pcie adapter for m.2 ssd (to use as a boot drive) and I think I'll try to configure a raid 10 array via Ubuntu server and see how that works. Windows would be easier but I don't need an OS with a front end on this machine, just a somewhat large storage space.

 

[mxnerd]

If you are doing RAID 10 then I'll prefer getting bigger drives and do a hardware mirror using real hardware RAID card, but it's your choice.

I never really used any software RAID before but I have really bad experience using Intel's on board software RAID, it was terrible, on multiple machines。 It could be out of sync even after a simple reboot and start re-mirroring. It was bad experience many years back though.

Make sure Molex connector is tightly connected, if not, HDDs can lose power easily caused by vibration or moving around the machine, which can cause all sorts of RAID problems.

 

[EXCellR8]

I could manage with RAID-5 too, and just make regular backups, that would be fine. I can upgrade to all 4TB drives at some point later on when I run out of space. For now it should be alright to use the 2TB's. So far the issue has been trying to get it all set up...

 

[EXCellR8]

Use a Dremel tool to cut open mini ITX PCIe x 4 slot so DELL PERC H310 can fit.

Like the video below.

Had a closer look and the x4 slot is already pre-molded to allow x8 cards... news to me.

 

[mxnerd]

Had a closer look and the x4 slot is already pre-molded to allow x8 cards... news to me.

Nice!

 

[XavierMace]

Be aware that if your motherboard doesn't have a "Boot to EFI Shell" option, you're going to run into some hurdles when flashing an LSI based card with the EFI IT Mode firmware. Assuming that's which route you're going that is.

 

[EXCellR8]

The board does support it but I'm setting aside the hardware RAID for now. I actually found a card in one of our recycling bins that I should be able to use but I'll have to order a new breakout cable. I'm going to see how mdadm works in Linux and then maybe revisit the issue.

 

[XavierMace]

That's what the IT mode firmware is for. That's pretty much the defacto card recommendation for ZFS based setups.

 

[mxnerd]

If you are using Linux software RAID, why do you need to use a hardware RAID card?

Doesn't software RAID support plain simple SATA?

 

[XavierMace]

If you are using Linux software RAID, why do you need to use a hardware RAID card?

Doesn't software RAID support plain simple SATA?

More ports, SAS support, cleaner cabling, easier maintenance. Take your pick.

 

[mxnerd]

More ports, SAS support, cleaner cabling, easier maintenance. Take your pick.

His original pick of RAID card does not support SAS and does not have cleaner cabling. Maybe his ITX motherboard only has 2 SATA ports?

 

[XavierMace]

His original pick of RAID card does not support SAS and does not have cleaner cabling. Maybe his ITX motherboard only has 2 SATA ports?

I thought you were replying to his latest update of finding a card in the trash and needing a breakout cable.

 

[EXCellR8]

Board has 4 6gbps sata ports... can't get it to read my m.2 drive on the pcie x4 slot though...

 

[EXCellR8]

Pardon my vast ignorance on m.2 SSD's but can someone quickly school me on what I'm doing wrong here?

I'm largely behind on my m.2 drive know-how but I'm obviously overlooking something very simple here. I bought a PCIe x4 adapter and a cheap Transcend SATA III m.2 SSD (this one) and it just doesn't want to work so I'm guessing it's not compatible with the adapter (this one right here.) So, my second take look is that the adapter is NOT for SATA SSD but NVMe SSD (although both come in m.2 form factor and different lengths...)

I'm a bit confused though because the SSD I bought does physically fit into the adapter just fine but it's not once been detected. Could use a bit of clarity here...

 

[mxnerd]

Think this article helps.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Overview-of-M-2-SSDs-586/

M.2 logical interfaces

In truth, the only time a M.2 drive shouldn't work at all even through the keying matches is if you try to use a M.2 SATA drive in a M.2 PCI-E only socket.

You might wan to buy SilverStone ECM20 or ECM22 controllers, both supports M.2 SATA & M2. PCIe drives at the same time.

https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-Technology-SST-ECM20-Adapter-ECM20/dp/B01798WOJ0

https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-Technology-Advanced-Solution-ECM22/dp/B075ZNWS9Y

Will need a SATA cable & port to support M.2 SATA drive.

Or since you want to setup RAID 10 for your 4 HDDs, then you need to return that Transcend SSD and replace it with a M.2 PCIe NVMe drive and keep your existing SIIG PCIe x4 adapter.

Don't know if you can boot from the setup though. It seems depends on the motherboard, chipset and BIOS.

M.2 vs NVMe

https://youtu.be/fJCHx7mZEKo?t=287

 

[EXCellR8]

thanks i'll look it over tonight

 

[mxnerd]

Dell PERC 6, H310, H710 tape trick if you ever need to go with Dell LSI RAID card and encounter booting problem.

http://yannickdekoeijer.blogspot.com/2012/04/modding-dell-perc-6-sas-raidcontroller.html

https://techmattr.wordpress.com/201...-flashing-to-it-mode-dell-perc-h200-and-h310/