Best eSATA cards for FreeNAS

[Dpynn]

Hi everyone,

First I want to thank the community for this site. I have come here often for help and will continue to do so.

I have 2 8-port Sans Digital external enclosures. Each enclosure is attached to a Dell 310 server. We are having issues with the eSATA controllers that come with these enclosures and need to replace them. We are running FreeNAS 8.2. Can anyone please recommend some PCI-E eSATA cards that have proven to be stable with FreeNAS? We would require eSATA cards with port multiplier support.

Thank you very much

Darren

 

[Dpynn]

No one? Seems to be a difficult bit of information to find answers on. Anyone have any luck getting a eSATA card with port multiplier support to work?

Thanks again..:)

 

[cyberjock]

Aside from looking for FreeBSD cards that are supported with 8.2(and soon 8.3) you have very few options. 99% of FreeNAS users are using internal drives. Did you try searching the forum for "esata"? If you have and couldn't find someone that has used one and has vouched that it works I don't know what to say.

 

[Dpynn]

noob, thanks for the reply. It does seem most people use internal drives. I did actually search for "esata" got a few hits but nothing definitive. I am going to order a "StarTech.com 2 Port SATA 6 Gbps PCI Express eSATA Controller Card PEXESAT32". It uses a Marvell chipset that I believe others have had some success with. Once I have this installed, I will report back and let everyone know how it went, as I have noticed others had similar questions as mine.

Thanks again noob, I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

Darren

 

[ghostlobster]

Actually, I had an old PCI (not PCIe) StarTech internal RAID/SATA 2 controller kicking around, providing 2 additional internal SATA 2 and one eSATA ports on it. Not the "best" as it will not be all that fast to SATA 3, PCIe cards, but it's functional and solid. Just for the hell of it, I tossed it into my FreeNAS rig, not expecting it to work, but low and behold, it did! I connected another 2 drives internally, and an external using the eSATA for backups, and it has not missed a beat.
I really was not expecting that kind of flexibility from this, but it works.
No, I don't know the model of the card, and I don't feel like pulling my PC apart to find it, but suffice to say, that FreeNAS (FfreeBSD) seems to be pretty lenient on this front regarding hardware, but YMMV.

 

[tingo]

@ghostlobster: you probably can tell what card it is by using the

Code:

pciconf -lv

command from ssh / console.
This thread is interesting; all I have heard / read previously is that esata (and anything related to that) is unreliable.
So please keep reporting your esata experiences, good or bad.

 

[Dpynn]

I just got a StarTech PEXESATA2 eSATA card. It is based on the SiL3132 chipset. I have read that some folks have had success with this chipset. I am probably asking something stupid (I am a noob), but it doesnt seem that Freenas is detecting the card. Is there something particular I need to do to get this card detected?

Thanks again all

 

[cyberjock]

99% of cards that are supported out of the box will "just work" when installed in your system. I would see if you have to manually load a driver from the manufacturer.

 

[Dpynn]

Our findings so far.

We purchased a StarTech PEXESATA2 eSATA card based on the SiL3132 chipset. I can confirm that Freenas 8.2 does detect this card. However, we are having problems getting our Dell R310 to detect it on a hardware level. Seems this is a known issue with some Dell servers. I put the card in a desktop and booted up using Freenas 8.2 live CD and it detected the card right away. Seems as though we might need to procure a card from a different manufacturer and see if it gets detected by the server itself.

I am going to keep you all up to date on our progress in the hopes that someone else might find this information useful. Also, thanks to noobsauce80 for continuing to post some helpful hints as we move along.

 

[titan_rw]

I have 2 sil3132 cards. Both are set for 2x esata ports. They're pci-e, but only sata 2.

The good thing about that chipset is that they support port multipliers. I've got a 4 drive esata enclosure that operates in 'individual' mode plugged into one port. All 4 drives work fine. Of course they share the bandwidth of a single sata2 port. I've got another 2 enclosures that are 2 drive esata. They are plugged into 2 of the other esata ports. They work fine too.

I'm not sure which pci-e sata 3 cards work with freenas, that also support port multipliers.