BUILD Aint this some kinda fun!

[Dirk]

When looking for options of storage after exhausting all six SATA ports on a board and wondering where to put boot and cache drives I cam across this and decided to give it a try. Card was only about $35, SSD about $66, and the 32GB DOM less than $70 WITH power cable from and Ebay seller in the San Jose area.

They make two different PCI cards, one with power and one that needs power from your PSU. I got the one with power and It's basically the same card without the power socket on the board. Referring to the pin-out on SATA power connector I clipped the plug off, passed through the card and soldered up on the back side.

I loaded the card into a test machine, and a new install of 9.3 recognized both drives and installed on the DOM without problem. Still collecting hardware for my build, so have not put this into production but if it works out OK, I leaves my 6 SATA on-board for the hard drives.

There may be drawbacks, so I thought I'd present this and see what the community finds of it.

 

[Spearfoot]

Do you have a link?

 

[SweetAndLow]

If your cool with gambling with your system and data feel free to use it but a hba card would have been better and the same price.

 

[Dirk]

Do you have a link?

Hay Spearfoot to each? Or a particular part? Obviously I'm new here, and so many forums frown on posting links I figured I'd find out first. If OK, I'd be happy to post the links.

 

[SweetAndLow]

What forums frown on posting links? I have never been a member on any of those sites.

 

[Dirk]

What forums frown on posting links? I have never been a member on any of those sites.

Without being specific, quite a lot particularly when it comes to service or product links due to shills selling stuff.

I was also not able to find an HBA that would do what I needed. Fractal 304 maxed at 6 drives, no place to mount SSD, on board SATA ports used up for hard drives, no place for DOM (and yes the DOM could have been mounted to the HBA, but then power is needed and most boards to date do not have the DOM power plug. 4 pin molex to DOM cables are available, but kind of clunky. This setup if it proves reliable, solves 3 problems in the 304 case.

 

[BigDave]

@Dirk
In one of your other posts you listed a Asrock C2550D4I purchased for your new system build.
Is this model a "nice to have" or is it the one you have in hand?

 

[Dirk]

@Dirk
In one of your other posts you listed a Asrock C2550D4I purchased for your new system build.
Is this model a "nice to have" or is it the one you have in hand?

Thanks for the catch BigDave, that was an error and has been corrected. Board on hand and mounted is an ASRock E3C224D2I

 

[BigDave]

Thanks for the catch BigDave, that was an error and has been corrected. Board on hand and mounted is an ASRock E3C224D2I

If that's the case and this board has the extra controller with 6 more SATA ports, why the PCIe expansion card
with SSD and DOM? I'm guessing that I'm confused on what your intensions are for the add-on card?
Now I see your post edit above, sorry.

I think the right fix for this is a bigger case to house future expansion. IMHO it's a crime to put
that board in that tiny case...

 

[Mirfster]

Interesting. I like "thinking outside the box". But not too sure if I would have chosen this route. ;)

Kudos though for coming up with a creative solution. Hope it turns out well for you.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Without being specific, quite a lot particularly when it comes to service or product links due to shills selling stuff.

I was also not able to find an HBA that would do what I needed. Fractal 304 maxed at 6 drives, no place to mount SSD, on board SATA ports used up for hard drives, no place for DOM (and yes the DOM could have been mounted to the HBA, but then power is needed and most boards to date do not have the DOM power plug. 4 pin molex to DOM cables are available, but kind of clunky. This setup if it proves reliable, solves 3 problems in the 304 case.

You can put ssds anywhere in that case, pretty sure I could fit 4 ssds on top of the hdds. 2 in front bezel, 2 attached to outer side of HDD racks.

But really it sounds like your problem is to small of a case.

What is the ssd even used for anyways? Most people will never need one.

 

[Dirk]

If that's the case and this board has the extra controller with 6 more SATA ports, why the PCIe expansion card
with SSD and DOM? I'm guessing that I'm confused on what your intensions are for the add-on card?
Now I see your post edit above, sorry.

I think the right fix for this is a bigger case to house future expansion. IMHO it's a crime to put
that board in that tiny case...

Np problem, thanks for the catch. The board is 6.7 X 6.7. Someone here said they had crammed an extended mini ITX into the fractal 304, but I agree on the small case. I think with the revolution in home servers/NAS systems, our options for compact cases and mother boards are going to expand real soon.

And at some point after 5 days of reading (that be me) you just have to decide on something which more often than not winds up being your best compromise..

 

[BigDave]

The cards chances of working with FreeNAS would solely depend on the driver needed to run it
AND the reliability of that driver. This is the reason @Spearfoot was asking for a link to the card, so specs
can be looked at closely. I can't say I would put any files of value on this set up without the
assurance of either the chipset on the card being validated for use in FreeBSD, OR the complete lack
of a driver needed if the device is truly "passed through" to the PCIe lane.

 

[Dirk]

You can put ssds anywhere in that case, pretty sure I could fit 4 ssds on top of the hdds. 2 in front bezel, 2 attached to outer side of HDD racks.

But really it sounds like your problem is to small of a case.

What is the ssd even used for anyways? Most people will never need one.

After much reading, (not all of it here of course) people seemed to favor the SSD for cache drive.

You have inspired me to check something though. It may be possible to past an SSD to the outside of the hard drive cage that already had a drive in it by mounting the SSD first with some stand offs.

 

[Dirk]

Interesting. I like "thinking outside the box". But not too sure if I would have chosen this route. ;)

Kudos though for coming up with a creative solution. Hope it turns out well for you.

A lot of people have offered their input in a short time here. That input is what educates me further ;-)

 

[Bidule0hm]

After much reading, (not all of it here of course) people seemed to favor the SSD for cache drive.

Ok, but why do you want a cache drive in the first place? and cache means L2ARC here?

 

[Dirk]

Do you have a link?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01452SP1O/?tag=ozlp-20

seems to be using asmedia 106x

 

[Dirk]

Ok, but why do you want a cache drive in the first place? and cache means L2ARC here?

Yes on the L2ARC. Am I to understand that there may be no benefit? All hardware decisions were made based on weeks of reading and setup trial and error installations in Virtualbox. My two posting are getting input for refining (and thanks to everyone who have offered it) Once mistakes are corrected to a point (and I'm not saying this one is not ;-) then I'll move on to input on how to set up those 6 drives and OS for my needs from the community.

I studied engineering for a while back when you wrote Fortran in VI under VMS on a VAX (hmmmm, funny how hey seemed to prefer V) and I remember my instructor saying " you want to refine your work, just bounce it off your co-workers before it goes to manufacturing by doing it wrong" ;-).

 

[jgreco]

Without being specific, quite a lot particularly when it comes to service or product links due to shills selling stuff.

If you're a shill, I'll happily reach down your throat all the way to the other end and pull what's there all the way back through.

In the meantime, any clever or useful technology links are probably fine. If not, someone from the moderation team will tell you.

 

[SweetAndLow]

After much reading, (not all of it here of course) people seemed to favor the SSD for cache drive.

You have inspired me to check something though. It may be possible to past an SSD to the outside of the hard drive cage that already had a drive in it by mounting the SSD first with some stand offs.

This is exactly what I just told you to do. No stand off required you just put the ssd on first then then HDD. You can also put ssds in bottom half of front bezel.