Adding SAS9211-8i to Build

[Fizzle]

Howdy there,

My little NAS/Media Server has only 4 measly SATA ports on the motherboard, and I can hold up to 6 drives in the case. It's made from old parts to keep costs down, but I definitely want to take advantage of all 6 bays. After doing some research I've decided on adding an LSI Logic 9211-8i to give me the ability to use those extra drives. Given my case, a Fractal Node 304, I am a little worried about cooking the poor card. Should I be? And if I do zip tie a fan to the heatsink for the cooling, would I be able to simply flash the card into IT mode and plug my drives in and it would just... work? I'm assuming I might need to rebuild my RAID array and would thus lose everything on the drives without a backup.

Thanks for your time!

 

[NickF]

Howdy there,

My little NAS/Media Server has only 4 measly SATA ports on the motherboard, and I can hold up to 6 drives in the case. It's made from old parts to keep costs down, but I definitely want to take advantage of all 6 bays. After doing some research I've decided on adding an LSI Logic 9211-8i to give me the ability to use those extra drives. Given my case, a Fractal Node 304, I am a little worried about cooking the poor card. Should I be? And if I do zip tie a fan to the heatsink for the cooling, would I be able to simply flash the card into IT mode and plug my drives in and it would just... work? I'm assuming I might need to rebuild my RAID array and would thus lose everything on the drives without a backup.

Thanks for your time!

You can absolutely zip tie a fan to the card, I've done it and seen alot of others here do it as well.

But yes, it should "just work" when you move the drives to the HBA, no configuration should be required.

Sounds like you have a decent plan.

 

[Fizzle]

Thanks for the reply! Would I need to worry about putting the drives in the same order as they were before?

 

[HoneyBadger]

Would I need to worry about putting the drives in the same order as they were before?

Nope! ZFS reads a label header from the drives themselves to import pools, so you can change drive over or tray location without concern.

Is your current motherboard SATA set to AHCI mode and not a "softRAID" or similar?

 

[Fizzle]

I believe it is AHCI, I never changed the settings! Have to double check once I get home from work though. The more I learn about this stuff the cooler it all gets. Thanks HoneyBadger!

 

[NickF]

Let us know how it goes.

 

[Fizzle]

I'll update the post when the card arrives!

 

[Fizzle]

Good/Bad news! The card and additional drives came and the card flash went off without a hitch and the heatsink for the card is very cool to the touch. Bad news. The drives I ordered from Newegg were packaged by an animal and were flopping around a cardboard box. So those arrived damaged. But the extras I had floating around worked fine!

 

[NickF]

Yeahhhh buying drives online is always a mixed bag. I’ve ironically had better experiences from a packing standpoint buying used drives on eBay than new ones from retailers.

 

[Fizzle]

I've ordered a GameBoy Advance that was packaged in about 6 layers of bubblewrap from a seller on ebay. Those dudes definitely know how to make sure things arrive safe! Just going to go through ordering directly from WD and see how that goes. Thank you for the help :)