XigmaNAS

Hi all,

just went through some rubbish at car boot sale and I found this card in good condition. Went back home and plugged in my pc... guess what? It works, I have a £120-250 worth card for £1.... one of the problems is that all components are on the other side (it's Supermicro own style and bracket doesn't fit, but if you remove it, then it's fine...

As far as can see there are few issues:
1, Hdd only up to 1-2TB per slot (there are x8 of them)
2. Raid card (but may be able to get rid of raid after re flash to Adaptec 5805 series...)
3. Find a way to secure it to the bracket...

Any thoughts to use it with NAS4Free?? It has punchy 525MHz CPU and 256MB ECC memory... Will it be better than onboard SATA?

Regards

Well try to sell it and invest the money in an add-on card which doesn't have this 2TB limit or in one of the server style Mainboards with avoton CPU and many onboard SATA - slots...

If the card allows multiple 2TB drives I would say that is a great find. Considering your drives as listed in your signature it would be more than enough.

Have a look at updating the bios / firmware. You might be able to go beyond that 2TB limit.

Already flashed with latest firmware from Supermicro, still need to try my 2TB WD red, to see this 2 TB limit. Adaptec firmware 5805 series (and this card is based on it) doesn't have that problem, but... It's not exactly Adaptec firmware either...
Someone tried that already and reported that it has no problem with >3TB, but no raid menu. I did as well, but windows couldn't find driver for it after reflash, so I reverted back to its original firmware. ...And that annoying bracket

actually no raid menu is exactly what you want.

you want a dumb controller that passes the drives directly to the operating system. but i dont think that the adaptec 5805 supports this.

have you tried
http://ask.adaptec.com/app/answers/deta ... -use-it%3F

Thanks b0ssman,

It looks like normal firmware upgrade, apart of using only 1 file. When I did upgrade , there was 7 more *.dfi files. What I've learn, Supermicro's "modified" bios may have only different vendor number to the Adaptec one. The mode 0 that you are pointed out , can be kernel update or something similar...

When I updated to latest Adaptec version, there was nothing from raid menu, but windows did recognised "PCI Memory controller" - nothing else, but I didn't search for it either... and I didn't see if N4F will see it. Still rebuilding my NAS, found great 3U case and discovered that out of advertised x9 HDD I can stick maybe x6 if I'm lucky. I'm using MATX board, so first 3 hdds will cook themselves as there is no fan in this compartment and I have to custom fit one. So, now I need either new case or controller OR sell controller - get better case... I will tinker with all of than, but if I cannot fit what I want, there will be another REbuild

Cannot decide whether to get Fractal Design Define Mini OR Fractal Design Arc Mini...

the norco cases like the RPC-4224 are very nice for rackmount builds
http://www.norcotek.com/item_detail.php ... o=RPC-4224
or the 3u
http://www.norcotek.com/item_detail.php ... o=RPC-3216

I have this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB5O1COoTO0

I don't want to get more than 6 Hdds and it will run only RaidZ2, but I'm getting very annoyed with this case...