Hi everyone
I’m looking to expand my storage. I have a case capable of 8 bays and I don’t think I’ll exceed that soon (currently at 3 drives).
I bought a m.2 slot with a bunch of sata ports on it but it doesn’t work. I’ve researched and read an HBA is a much better solution anyway.
If I’m going to get the HBA I might as well run all 8 ports on it.
Aside from the clearance on the card in the case, are there any other considerations I need to he aware of? I justbeant to get something that works from the get go. For my uses I have a good amount of apps and I stream media from the server
CPU- i5-10400f 2.90ghz
MOBO - asrock h570m-itx/ac
RAM - gskill f4-3200c16-8gvkb
GPU - Quadro k620 (gm107gl) rev a2
CASE - Jonsbo N3


If you are intending to run software raid then you want something that can be flashed to Initiator Target or IT mode. There is a JBOD function for some RAID cards and you DO NOT want that because it does not send all the same data that software raid wants from the dive. You also do not want to waste money on a card with RAM or Battery Backups since they are really designed for hardware RAID.
A SAS3008 card will really be what you are looking for.
https://www.ebay.com/shop/lsi-sas-3008?_nkw=lsi+sas+3008
With a SAS backplane or expanders you can connect 256 drives.
Great thank you
Will thus work for zfs truenas aswell
LSI has really good compatibility with TrueNAS and any Linux system tbh.
I just about pulled the trigger on it and saw my board only has one pcie which us presently occupied. Back to the drawing board!
Then it’s probably time to switch boards. Anything that will expand drive connections will need a PCIe slot. Using an adapter that goes into an m.2 is probably going to have issues. Using USB based devices is asking for trouble.
Yep. I’m using one myself.