Enabling SATAe ports

[tgsekhar]

So...I'm having a problem and I do not know who to turn to, but this forum. I just put together a new box from scratch to serve as my new FreeNAS box. It uses a Gigabyte B250M-D3H motherboard and everything is fine, but for one small issue. The board has 6 SATA ports which should be fine, but it also has this eSATA port with two sata ports and a power connector I guess. I do not have any specific esata devices and wanted to use the two sata ports which would give me 8. The only problem is that anything plugged into either of those two ports do not show up in the system at all. I have enable the AHCI in the BIOS to no avail. While I can live with 6 ports, it would be great to get two additional ports. My original thought was to use 5 2TB drives and 1 120 GB SSD that I had lying around. Now I have another 120 GB SSD which I was planning to mirror as an additional volume for other things like jails and such. But with only 6 functioning ports that wont be happening.

Any advice/help from the experts here would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Chris Moore]

It is a poor choice for a system board. You totally ignored the recommended hardware lists that have been painstakingly assembled and maintained by the members here. You might want to look into them:
FreeNAS® Quick Hardware Guide
and
Hardware Recommendations Guide

From looking at the documentation, it appears that you have the choice of using the internal connectors or using the external connectors, but not both. I have an old Gigabyte board that has that limitation.
Best to just get another SATA or SAS controller to put in a slot.
If you have any questions, please ask.

 

[MrToddsFriends]

And please don't confuse SATAe (or rather SATA Express) with eSATA.

 

[tgsekhar]

It is a poor choice for a system board. You totally ignored the recommended hardware lists that have been painstakingly assembled and maintained by the members here. You might want to look into them:
FreeNAS® Quick Hardware Guide
and
Hardware Recommendations Guide

From looking at the documentation, it appears that you have the choice of using the internal connectors or using the external connectors, but not both. I have an old Gigabyte board that has that limitation.
Best to just get another SATA or SAS controller to put in a slot.
If you have any questions, please ask.

Thank you for the input. I was going for a low cost option. My current Freenas box is a repurposed Dell Poweredge 2950 which is really rock solid and does everything that I need it for, except that it costs me about $200 a month in electricity. Have used it for 3 months and I keep hearing a rather large sucking sound everytime I go near it. Hence this setup. I was trying to get it all under about $300. I might just get the $30 sata pcie expansion card.

 

[tgsekhar]

And please don't confuse SATAe (or rather SATA Express) with eSATA.

My apologies for that faux pas. Having said that, is there anyway I can use those SATA Express ports?

 

[Chris Moore]

My apologies for that faux pas. Having said that, is there anyway I can use those SATA Express ports?

Take a look at this article: https://us.hardware.info/reviews/53...esting-the-new-generation-m2-and-sata-express

 

[MrToddsFriends]

My apologies for that faux pas. Having said that, is there anyway I can use those SATA Express ports?

I doubt that SATA Express ports are nowadays useful for anything, but maybe I'm overlooking something.

I might just get the $30 sata pcie expansion card.

There is no such thing as a $30 sata pcie expansion card in the Hardware Recommendations Guide. If you do a forum search you will find that the Marvell 88SE9235 based Syba/IOCrest SI-PEX40062 seems to work well.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...t-ml10-gen9-freenas-server.56763/#post-398369

 

[Ericloewe]

SATA Express? You can use the individual SATA connectors for plain old SATA, instead of two+extra little bit for a PCIe connection.

Edit: Nope, not on this board, the ports aren't wired for SATA. Thanks, Gigabyte! /s

Important note: The SATA controller driving those ports may be horribly unreliable. Have fun validating it!

 

[MrToddsFriends]

SATA Express? You can use the individual SATA connectors for plain old SATA, instead of two+extra little bit for a PCIe connection.

In the case of the Gigabyte B250M-D3H the manual states that the SATA Express connector is not compatible with regular SATA devices. I'm too lazy to learn more about SATA Express, which seems to be a nonstarter.

 

[Ericloewe]

Oh, great, gratuitous incompatibility. Gotta love that!

 

[Chris Moore]

is there anyway I can use those SATA Express ports?

It is this kind of incompatibility that we try to avoid by using actual server boards. Sorry.

 

[tgsekhar]

Thanks for all the input. After having done a lot of reading, I figured out that the SATA Express ports if used, will render two of the regular SATA ports invalid, in return for the "luxury" of being able to connect it to one drive and that the cable for said device is about $30! For that price, I was able to get a Marvell PCIE 4 port SATA 3 card which has worked like a charm! What a waste of space on the motherboard by putting this port in.

 

[Chris Moore]

Thanks for all the input. After having done a lot of reading, I figured out that the SATA Express ports if used, will render two of the regular SATA ports invalid, in return for the "luxury" of being able to connect it to one drive and that the cable for said device is about $30! For that price, I was able to get a Marvell PCIE 4 port SATA 3 card which has worked like a charm! What a waste of space on the motherboard by putting this port in.

That is one of the reasons I said it was a poor choice for a system board.
If you keep to the hardware that is in the guide your success rate is better.
FreeNAS® Quick Hardware Guide
and
Hardware Recommendations Guide