[OpenIndiana-discuss] Need a PCI e-sata card for OI151a

[Jason Matthews]

e-SATA shares the same electrical specification as SATA. The primary
difference is in the cable shielding specification. I would consider using a
LSI card and an adapter to go from the non/lightly shielded internal SATA
cable to the heavily shielded e-SATA cable. I am not aware of anyone who
makes one with a repeater to maintain super high signal quality but it
should work w/o such a device (supermicro does it all the time ;-], where as
Intel doesn't).

If you get an 8-port card you could dump your onboard ports altogether and
get the hot-plug you deserve. For 1068e based products you'll want the
SAS3801-R -- while it comes with the RAID firmware it is designed for
internal ports. The plan SAS3081 has two four port external plugs which you
don't want.  

You should be able to flash the SAS3081-R with the IT firmware or simply not
configure RAID on it, in which case the drives are exposed as JBODs by
default.

j.

PS - you'll need an 8x PCI-e slot.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/?_nkw=sas3081&clk_rvr_id=327631751749

if you have prime, these adapters ship for free.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-
keywords=sata+to+e-sata+bracket#/ref=sr_nr_p_85_0?rh=n%3A172282%2Ck%3Asata+t
o+e-sata+bracket%2Cp_85%3A2470955011&bbn=172282&keywords=sata+to+e-sata+brac
ket&ie=UTF8&qid=1332871247&rnid=2470954011




-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Swartzendruber [mailto:dswartz at druber.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 6:11 AM
To: 'Discussion list for OpenIndiana'
Subject: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Need a PCI e-sata card for OI151a

Here's my situation: m1015 with 6 sata drives for pool tank.  7th port has
15K 73GB SAS drive as cache device.  8th port currently connected to e-sata
connector on front panel of case for monthly backups.  160GB sata drive on
one of the 4 motherboard sata ports (supermicro pdsmi+).  I have a 64GB
crucial m4 I want to use as a log device, but plugging it into the
motherboard seems to only yield sata1 speed (in addition to the fact that OI
apparently refuses to even go to the grub menu and just hangs - sigh...)
Even when I didn't have that issue (e.g. just switched from nexenta back to
OI), I discovered the motherboard ports apparently do NOT support hot-plug,
so switching the M4 and the e-sata connector is a no-go (unless I want to
have to boot with the e-sata drive plugged in and turned on - LOL).  My
motherboard only has one pcie slot (x8) which is where the m1015 resides.
So the plan is to get a pci card with e-sata connector.  I've found a couple
of cheap rosewill cards on newegg, that indicate the sil3512 chipset, but
I'm having trouble finding out if that is supported or not.  Any help
appreciated!

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