I’m looking at some common desktop motherboards and a lot of them only have like 2 or 4 SATA ports. (But do have other M.2 or PCIe slots.)
How do people connect 10 hard drive disks to something like this? Or do I have to purchase an Enterprise Server Motherboard to support this use case?
I’m trying to build my own NAS/media center and I want a ton of storage.
DO NOT USE REGULAR PCI-E CARDS THAT ADD SATA PORTS. Many are unreliable. What you want is called a SAS Host Bus Adapter card and you want to get one that’s pre-flashed in IT mode.
The LSI 9207 is a good choice.
Make sure you get the correct SAS to SATA cables and you are set. You can add 8 to 16 SATA drives with a single, high speed, and reliable card.
+1 on the LSI cards, I’ve been running one for a year or so now
That sent me down a rabbit hole and I learned a lot, thank you
An HBA does not need to be flashed. A RAID controller does, so that it performs as an HBA and not a RAID controller.