SAS Expanders, pick your brains.

[pauls3743]

Right guys, I'm looking to pick your collective brains, for a change.

In my server at home I have an adaptec 3805, it's currently has 8 drives connected directly to it. I recently bought another pair of hard drives to add to it. Preferably, I would like my RAID controller to host them, add them to the existing RAID array. However, given that it's an 8 port card with 8 drives connected, this cannot be done. My problem is that to do this I need a SAS port expander that's compatible with my RAID controller and will still allow for RAID 5 to work through it. Any ideas?

 

[pauls3743]

Well I finally plumped for an intel RES2SV240. It's a 24 port SAS expander which basically works like a network switch. So far so good. Backed up my server prior to installing the card. Installed it with minimal hard drives and the drive array removed to make sure the basic connections were connected, configured right and my array wasn't toast in the process. I had moved the SAS raid card so when I booted Windows it saw the changes and had to reboot. Re-installed the raid array and it's like nothing has happened. Got some testing to do for performance but so far it's looking good.

Next plan is to get more hard drives to expand the raid array.

 

[popatim]

Thanks for the update
Sorry I was out of town for my birthday that week :> I wondered how I missed this easy one. LoL.