FreeNAS Build Will these cards work?

1

Hi all

I’m looking at building myself a new FreeNAS system, I’m wondering whether anyone has used one of these cards with FreeNAS or knows whether they would work?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-Port-PCI-SATA-RAID-Controller-Card-Extension-Adapter-with-2-Sata-Cables-AC1264/152988487518?epid=2289394057&hash=item239ed30f5e:g:y8sAAOSw99Ra14IN

Why this card? Because it supports JBOD, I’ll do ZFS within FreeNAS itself so don’t necessarily need a Full-fledged RAID Card.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Thanks

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Might work, but honestly I would go for something more recent.

Looks like this not even PCI Express, just PCI. It only supports SATA 1,5 GBit/s, none of the newer and faster SATA standards. And it might not support drives with a capacity of more than 2TB.

I can recommend LSI 2008-based cards, they set you back around $30 (used) and can be flashed into so-called IT-mode (initiator-target) which disables all RAID cabapilities and makes it function like a plain old HBA. Some of them even allow for SAS/SATA Expanders, letting you connect up to 256 drives to one card.

1 Like
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Exactly the response I was looking for!!!

Thanks

If I picked up one of the LSI cards where would I find the IT firmware?

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I think that depends on exactly what model of card you get. I myself bough an IBM ServeRAID M1015, and I got my instructions and download link from this site. You might be able to find the original firmware on the Broadcom support website (under “legacy products”, likely).

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Thanks, I may have one of those IBM cards I’ll have a look around the office.

Thanks