XigmaNAS

Hi to all.

I found this card googling arround, but looks like nobody knows anything about what chip it mounts and if it's supported by Nas4Free. Could be a RENESAS chip, because I found some mini-pcie to USB cards from the same german producer
http://www.inline-info.de/en/inline-det ... ikel/8539/
that uses Renesas chips. The price is arround 20-22 euro, really cheap, and the next price step is 55-60 euro, the "StarTech.com MPEXSATA22"

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Expr ... B004NNRRN8
based on a (basically supported, as far as I read on FreeBSD forum) Silicon Image SiI3132.

Any experiences out here with the InLine card (or chip) ?

Hi,

didn't find any Information about the chip either. It *may* be an Asmedia ASM1061 judging from the look and the price tag.

You may get a similar card from Delock e.g. 95233. It's available for 20...25 Euros. Seen it on eBay and Amazon. That card is powered by the mentioned ASM1061.

Regards

seaside wrote:Hi,
didn't find any Information about the chip either. It *may* be an Asmedia ASM1061 judging from the look and the price tag.
You may get a similar card from Delock e.g. 95233. It's available for 20...25 Euros. Seen it on eBay and Amazon. That card is powered by the mentioned ASM1061.
Regards

Yes, these two cards look identical. I've found an old post (2011-2012) on freeBSD forum where this Asmedia chip worked (for somebody) and not (for somebody else). I suspect motherboard compatibility/BIOS issues for the unlucky guys, however this chip doesn't seem (to me, at least) a reliable solution for a growing-up needs involving HDD space. The Silicon Image chip looks slightly better, but "slightly better than unreliable" places itself somewhere arround "less crappy". I'll going up replacing HDD with bigger ones on the motherboards sata ports untill I'll find a better (and non expensive) solution.

If you want to try some SIL card for less you may try the following:

Commell MPX-3132

It's available for 30Euros

Look what I've found about the SiliconImage 3132 here (unRaid hardware compatibility list):

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.p ... ard_Drives

search for "SiI3132" (four entries) and read the last one...

Just don't!
I have been there, done that, spent money on the cheap PCIE, it did not hold the transfer speeds well, kept crashing under heavy load and 2 out of 4 ports on the controller did not want to work. Save yourself all the hassle and buy a decent SAS controller instead...

chrisf4lc0n wrote:Just don't!
I have been there, done that, spent money on the cheap PCIE, it did not hold the transfer speeds well, kept crashing under heavy load and 2 out of 4 ports on the controller did not want to work. Save yourself all the hassle and buy a decent SAS controller instead...

Which card you're talking about ? Four sata ports ?

It was some cheap noname, which I ordered from German Amazon. It was on JMB363 chip. Got it recognized by the NAS4Free with no problems, and it seemed to work fine until I pushed it too hard, then it started dropping the transfer and eventually the disks It was 4 sata, but 2 of them were shared over IDE so max transfer was 133 Mb/s split between the 2. An ultimate piece of sh%^&!

chrisf4lc0n wrote:Just don't!
I have been there, done that, spent money on the cheap PCIE, it did not hold the transfer speeds well, kept crashing under heavy load and 2 out of 4 ports on the controller did not want to work. Save yourself all the hassle and buy a decent SAS controller instead...

chrisf4lc0n wrote:It was some cheap noname, which I ordered from German Amazon. It was on JMB363 chip. Got it recognized by the NAS4Free with no problems, and it seemed to work fine until I pushed it too hard, then it started dropping the transfer and eventually the disks It was 4 sata, but 2 of them were shared over IDE so max transfer was 133 Mb/s split between the 2. An ultimate piece of sh%^&!

I totally agree...

Tried many similar 2-port cheap pci-e sata cards (with different controllers - cannot remember at the moment). Actually I tried almost every single kind I could find on AliExpress at the time.
Cannot suggest even one.

They were not even close to the SATA ports of the mainboard controller.
So I'm using an LSI SAS controller card now for expansion.

Well, are they completely useless?No. When you're out of SATA ports on your "PC", you might use one for an external sata connection for backups etc. That's all...

Other than that: no performance at all, high CPU usage, no dependability...

rio9210 wrote:Look what I've found about the SiliconImage 3132 here (unRaid hardware compatibility list):

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.p ... ard_Drives

search for "SiI3132" (four entries) and read the last one...

Nice catch. Will remember that in case the need arises for a SATA card.

FWIW the Commell card is used by the Mac hardware hacking community (yes, there is such a thing ) to add SATA ports to iMacs or Minis because drivers are available for OSX and there weren't any complaints yet. But those machines are not used as file servers.

For building a NAS it's probably wise to stay away from the cheap stuff…