12 SATA ports via PCI-X slots

[Torsten Kersandt]

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:53:15 -0500
From: Douglas K. Rand <rand at meridian-enviro.com>
Subject: 12 SATA ports via PCI-X slots
To: freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org
Message-ID: <87mxpmtbr8.wl%rand at meridian-enviro.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

I have a moderately aged Tyan S4882 system that I need to support 12
SATA disks with for a ZFS pool. The motherboard doesn't provide any
PCI-Express slots, but does have two 133 MHz PCI-X slots. 

Other than a 3ware S9550SX-12 or Areca ARC-1130, both of which are a
bit hard to find, I was wondering if anybody had suggestions for me. 

************************************************

HI Douglas

I'm using the
http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SAT2-MV8.cfm

With FreeBSD 6.4/7.2/8.0 and 8.1

In your case that would be 2 cards to a total of 16 ports, but you have 4
SATA build in and may get away with one card only

Very fast and at USD100 very reasonable and on ebay half price.
I use the card only for JOBD/SATA to PCI because the RAID is software and
rather unusable
The good thing is that you can interchange your drives to and from standard
SATA controllers later and will not lose access or partitions.

Good luck 

Regards
Torsten