XigmaNAS

Looking for a SATA controller with the following properties:

- Up to PCIe 4x (unfortunately PCIe 8x, such as IBM M1015 does not fit)
- At least 4 SATA ports or 1x SFF8087.
- HDD >= 6TB compatible
- JBOD (don't need/want RAID functions)
- Low price (not willing to spend more money for a controller, than for a mainboard)

a good page to start is: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10

Did you see that pinned post at the top of this page? It lists them all.

I've seen the list, but the controllers listed are:
-too expensive (with the exception of the 2-port controller)
-only up to 2 TB compatible
-with PCIe x8
-too slow
The Marvell 88SX7042 is interesting.
But in Germany I found only Dawicontrol-cards with this chip (too expensive).
So perhaps one here knows better.

how much can you/ do you want to invest?
This Dawicontrol works with N4F: http://geizhals.de/dawicontrol-dc-624e- ... 77970.html

My ASRock QC5000-ITX (incl. CPU) is cheaper than this Dawicontrol.
I'm looking for a controller for round about € 30.-

For the Dawicontrol I personally know that it works 100% with N4F.

The disks and the controller are the heart of a NAS, so don't mess with crappy hardware.
I also found this, but there is no information which chipset is used:
http://geizhals.de/inline-76617e-a12131 ... at&hloc=de

Just a hint with your board (ASRock QC5000-ITX) you should not use ZFS for the disks.

I can see cheapest SATA 4port card for 53€ in our local HW store. Do not try to save too much on the most crucial part of NAS...

don't mess with crappy hardware

Uhh...
I think you're right, maybe I should sell the QC5000 and buy an Avaton based motherboard with 8 x SATA connectors.
A few weeks ago b0ssman also recommend this type of board.

I should sell the QC5000

The board is nice, just not for a NAS system
I use exactly this board for video transcoding of DVB streams (from .ts to h.264 .mkv) on Linux.

A nice system for N4F is also the HP N54L or of course the ASRock C2550D4I / C2750D4I boards

What about this controller: LSI 3ware 9650SE-8LPML
Will this work ok with N4F? (4TB disk / spin down)

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.3R/h ... ml#support
and http://store.lsi.com/index.cfm/Clearanc ... 0SE-8LPML/#

http://www.sybausa.com/productInfo.php? ... rentPage=0

same chipset as the controller on the asrock board.

I am only buying motherboards with support for 8 or more SATA devices now as it just generally runs much better than the smaller add-in cards.