Expand number of sata ports

Like it or not, you are going to be pretty much stuck with an x8 pcie card (most have with RAID capabilities) to get anywhere near that many connections. And it won't be a cheap card, as it will be one with mini SAS connectors and you will need mini SAS to 4 SATA type cables. The cables alone run like $30+ each.

What kind of home brew NAS are you cooking up and what kind of database size do you need? It would probably be more efficient (and cheaper) to attach fewer large drives, i.e. 4Tb drives than a bunch of small drives.

If your board won't handle an AOC-SAS2LP-MV8, then it most likely won't handle any of the other solutions that would accomplish that either.

thanks for the replay Realbeast
actually i am not going to do a Nas, i am installing stock windows 8, create a pool for each cat, use PlexServer to serve em
i got about 3Tb of home movies, not mentioning movies and serieses and photos, so i thought going rg windows will make it easier to organize

as far as the bord, i am getting a new one, so all options are open... but i think since i am buying i might aswell get a controller that support 3tb harddrives at least

so any suggestions ?

Hi there,

You can get some cheap add-in SATA controllers for a couple of bucks. They're not great but they'll get the job done

SAS controllers will work on any motherboard so long as they have the appropriate interface (PCIe 1/4/8 depending on the card) and driver support. Most discrete controllers have extremely mature driver suites for all versions of Windows and Linux so this is rarely an issue. Best of all, SAS has full lateral compatibility with SATA-II hard drives so most discrete SAS controllers will handle both.

ey Pinhedd
any ones that you recommend ? i need them to support 3tb per drive

I'm not sure what your budget is so I'll suggest a few:

This one is a bit pricey but the 3 mini-SAS ports can each be fanned out to 4 logically independent SATA ports. SATA allows only one logical initiator-terminator connection but SAS's compatibility compensates for this.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Here's a pure SATA controller that supports up to 8 drives. There's a price premium to using SAS controllers. With the proliferation of onboard SATA the market has kinda bottomed out for non-enterprise RAID controller cards. 3 of these would handle all your drives nicely but the cables will be a mess

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Here's another one that does only SATA over multi-lane cables (still only one logical connection per drive, which is fine). Unfortunately it doesn't come with multi-lane cables

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Here's a great one that supports up to 24 drives alone and has some awesome management features. It also states clearly that it supports 64 bit block addressing which is required for booting and handling 3TB drives outside of windows. Its pricey but you would only have to buy one and the associated cables to wire your entire system.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

the pricing seems to be extreme... espacially when i am not going to use any raid...

do you think i should get a mobo with sas support and just get 2 of ths :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

You don't need to have SAS support on the motherboard to use a controller card that supports SAS.

so the controller i just linked should work on any motherboard ? i get it + 1x4 sas to sata cable and i am ready to use 4 harddrives ?

correct. It will work on any motherboard that has a PCIe 4x slot. Keep in mind that if you want more than one you can also put it into an 8x slot or even a 16x slot. It won't latch in so you will have to secure it to the back panel like any other card but it will work just fine in a larger slot.