m-ITX: I need 4 SATA ports, which board/board+card?

[morci]

I'm thinking about building a DIY NAS and I want it to be small, so I decided for a m-ITX board.
Point is: are there any _very_ low power boards hosting 4 SATA ports?
As an alternative to integrated ports I might also look at MB+cards/adapters.
For example: an Intel D945GSEJT with a PCI SATA card or with an IDE to SATA adapter (like that one: http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=11623). Does it sounds reasonable? I'm not looking at the very best possible performances but I'd also like to avoid transfer rates of 3MB/s...

Ciao,
Davide.

[xan_user]

why mess around with a mobo with its wasted power consumption and OS headaches?

people will think ive started spamming...if i recommend addonics much more.

http://www.addonics.com/products/nas/nasu2.asp
+
their drive port multiplier and a quiet PSU to power however many drives you want.

[StartledPancake]

I'm thinking about building a DIY NAS and I want it to be small, so I decided for a m-ITX board.
Point is: are there any _very_ low power boards hosting 4 SATA ports?
As an alternative to integrated ports I might also look at MB+cards/adapters.
For example: an Intel D945GSEJT with a PCI SATA card or with an IDE to SATA adapter (like that one: http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=11623). Does it sounds reasonable? I'm not looking at the very best possible performances but I'd also like to avoid transfer rates of 3MB/s...

Ciao,
Davide.

The PoV ION atom 330 board does a good job as a file server, although it only has 3 SATA ports. There is a 16x PCIe slot for an additional SATA card if required, I would avoid using PCI for SATA if possible.

Power use is 24-30 watts with 2GB RAM, 2x 320 GB 2.5" drives and 1x 3.5" 1TB Samsung ecogreen.

Transfer rates are around 60MB/s+ with CIFS/iSCSI over the onboard LAN card.

If its going to be used as a NAS only then these things are fine, but if you decide you want to do something more exotic with it, likely you'll be disappointed.

[morci]

why mess around with a mobo with its wasted power consumption and OS headaches?

You're right: I didn't mention the fact that I'd like it to be a full x86 linux box so that I can use it for others things too (I'm thinking about IP surveillance and the likes).

Ciao,
Davide.

[morci]

The PoV ION atom 330 board does a good job as a file server, although it only has 3 SATA ports.

My understanding is that an atom 230+945GSE combo is quite less power hungry than a 330+ION. The ION should be at about 24W when idle compared to the 12W of the 945GSE (correct me if I'm wrong).
With the ION I also need an external DC-to-DC converter (I'd like to save as much space as possible) and I still miss the 4th SATA port (but didn't the PoV board sport 4 SATAs?). The other main drawback is that the PoV has a fan!

There is a 16x PCIe slot for an additional SATA card if required, I would avoid using PCI for SATA if possible.

This is really puzzling me. In *real life* figures, how much less performance I'm going to experience by using a PCI 2 ports SATA adapter vs a PCIe one?

Power use is 24-30 watts with 2GB RAM, 2x 320 GB 2.5" drives and 1x 3.5" 1TB Samsung ecogreen.

Transfer rates are around 60MB/s+ with CIFS/iSCSI over the onboard LAN card.

If its going to be used as a NAS only then these things are fine, but if you decide you want to do something more exotic with it, likely you'll be disappointed.

Thanks for the figures. I Appreciated them.

Ciao,
Davide.

[xan_user]

why mess around with a mobo with its wasted power consumption and OS headaches?

You're right: I didn't mention the fact that I'd like it to be a full x86 linux box so that I can use it for others things too (I'm thinking about IP surveillance and the likes).

Ciao,
Davide.

Sounds like a server, not a NAS. Will this 'server' be displaying the ip security images? or will video be displayed only the client side pc on the lan?

[morci]

Sounds like a server, not a NAS. Will this 'server' be displaying the ip security images? or will video be displayed only the client side pc on the lan?

Well, as of now it has to be a NAS. But I want to keep my options open for the future. As for the IP surveillance thing: I haven't decided anything as of now. I still have to look around and see what's available. The idea, however, is to be able to access the camera images from the internet.

CIao,
Davide.

[StartledPancake]

The PoV ION atom 330 board does a good job as a file server, although it only has 3 SATA ports.

My understanding is that an atom 230+945GSE combo is quite less power hungry than a 330+ION. The ION should be at about 24W when idle compared to the 12W of the 945GSE (correct me if I'm wrong).
With the ION I also need an external DC-to-DC converter (I'd like to save as much space as possible) and I still miss the 4th SATA port (but didn't the PoV board sport 4 SATAs?). The other main drawback is that the PoV has a fan!

There is a 16x PCIe slot for an additional SATA card if required, I would avoid using PCI for SATA if possible.

This is really puzzling me. In *real life* figures, how much less performance I'm going to experience by using a PCI 2 ports SATA adapter vs a PCIe one?

Power use is 24-30 watts with 2GB RAM, 2x 320 GB 2.5" drives and 1x 3.5" 1TB Samsung ecogreen.

Transfer rates are around 60MB/s+ with CIFS/iSCSI over the onboard LAN card.

If its going to be used as a NAS only then these things are fine, but if you decide you want to do something more exotic with it, likely you'll be disappointed.

Thanks for the figures. I Appreciated them.

Ciao,
Davide.

Yeah - the PoV board does have 4 sata connectors, I put that in my own review of it . Its actually a really good board for a home built NAS, its such a shame it Intel disabled VT in that cpu or it would have made a resonable, low power 24/7 ESX host as well.

The PCI bus maximum transfer rate is 133MB/s shared between USB, the soundcard etc. Considerably less than the SATA I spec and miles less than SATA II. Not good if you were hoping to read from your drives cache or use RAID 0. The extra card will add extra w's too.

As for the GSE, I havent got one to compare it to but and even the 330 atom's performance is just enough. Gb file transfers can place a large load on the CPU due to the network card driver overhead, software RAID (eg Nvidia RAID) and SATA using the CPU for data flow. Of course, I dont have any hard evidence to back this up . I guess it all depends on what your going to use the system for.

[cordis]

This one is on sale, $99 is a pretty decent deal:

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms_9832_010

4 sata ports + an old IDE port, shame it's only an Atom 230. But there's also an Atom 330 board with 4 sata + ide on it, although it's a little pricier.

[morci]

This one is on sale, $99 is a pretty decent deal:

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms_9832_010

4 sata ports + an old IDE port, shame it's only an Atom 230. But there's also an Atom 330 board with 4 sata + ide on it, although it's a little pricier.

Yup. That would have been perfect (of course I do not need the serials, but who cares) had it used the 945GSE chipset. That's what I'm looking for.
But I guess it is just matter of time before major vendors start shipping boards with it and 4 SATA connectors (unless there is some kind of limit related to the 945GSE - I really hope this is not the case).

Ciao,
Davide.

[morci]

Yeah - the PoV board does have 4 sata connectors, I put that in my own review of it . Its actually a really good board for a home built NAS, its such a shame it Intel disabled VT in that cpu or it would have made a resonable, low power 24/7 ESX host as well.

I do not know... I'm looking for a 945GSE chipset. I know it does not really make such a big difference but the idea of having a chipset that simply wastes power makes me uncomfortable.

As for the GSE, I havent got one to compare it to but and even the 330 atom's performance is just enough. Gb file transfers can place a large load on the CPU due to the network card driver overhead, software RAID (eg Nvidia RAID) and SATA using the CPU for data flow. Of course, I dont have any hard evidence to back this up . I guess it all depends on what your going to use the system for.

I read some figures about atom-based nas @ smallnetbuilder and I'm fine with them. My idea, as of now, is to create a couple of partitions in each disk and use a software RAID 5 for one of them (for critical backups) while using the other for a simple JBOD (probably based on Unionfs or the likes, so that one broken disk does not affect the files stored in the others). This thing is not going to be blazing fast anyway, this is why I'm wondering if the PCI-SATA solution would really affect the overall performance.

Ciao,
Davide.

[morci]

Oh, well. It looks like I just have to sit and wait for this "Bandon" thing to hit the shelves.
But, wait, the first images show the return of the hideous fan!!! ARGH!!!

Ciao,
Davide.