Hi every one. I'm looking for a little mother board wich could allow me to build my own NAS or fileserver. But it's always the same problem : ONLY ONE SATA CONNECTOR (when there's one)! Can't you plan a board including several (4 at least) SATA connectors ? Everybody talks about those cards for drones, robots, developping and so on but data storage is always forgotten. Of course, USB is in da place but I don't consider adding a USB interface to a SATA hard drive is a cheap and usefull solution. So what ?
Could you be more precise ? Do you mean the motherboard can be expanded through the m.2 slot ? Dou you have any example ? Edit : How much sata port do you think you could add usind M2 port ? My searchs seem to show that we can only obtain 1 sata port so it would make 2 Sata port. I'm looking for more.
you need to get an M.2 to PCIe adapter and than just get a SATA PCIe card. Make sure to get a dedicated or good card so you can use it to handle RAID instead of the CPU. If the PCIe card uses more power than can be provided by M.2 slot than you need to add external power for it. If there is a card for the M.2 slot than you can use that instead. The other alternative is to use 2 M.2 SSDs instead of hard drives (1 of the M.2 according to the devs isnt PCIe).
Thank you for details. Do you have some examples of M.2 to PCIe adapter which should be good ? I've found that : - M.2 to PCIe adapter : http://www.hwtools.net/ExtenderBoard/P4SM2.html - SATA PCIe card : http://www.delock.de/produkte/G_89395/merkmale.html?setLanguage=en Do you think it vwould be convenient ? Another question : Even if it doesn't make sense (I don't know what I could do with that but I ask), do you think the bundle "Motherboard" + "M.2 to PCIe adapter" + "SATA PCIe card" would work with Android ? Do not answer this question if you find it ridiculous Many thanks for your help
if the adapter is passive than it is just a matter of getting SATA drivers for android. By passive adapter meaning it just does electrical rather than using a chip like what some PCIe chips were used to give more lanes.
you need just search "sata hub" or visit here. most of hard disk read speed is below 200MB/s, sata interface speed is 6G. 6x1024/8>200*3 so no lag if only connect 3 hard disk.
The SATA controller on the UDOO X86 does not support port multipliers (source: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ver/comments?cursor=13201226#comment-13201225)
If the m.2 port supports SATA, you should be able to get by with a straight m.2-to-sata adapter such as: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/SATA...Card-22X30mm-22x42mm-22x60mm/32620906779.html Together with a SATA cable with separate power connectors: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Rasp...-Cubieboard-SATA-Power-Cable/32332457642.html
Sorry to raise a thread from the dead but this is my chief concern as well. Not support multipliers puts the UDOO X86 at a significant disadvantage when trying to figure out how to build a NAS or Media Server. Is the only work around utilizing the M.2 port? Very interested in how people who are also interested in building a NAS/Media Server plan to work around UDOO X86's shortcomings as it relates to 1 SATA and no support for multipliers.
You might be more accurate? You mean the motherboard can be expanded through M.2 Dou you have or do not sample or not.
@Andrea Rovai thank you for the information. My concern is the number of drives you will be able to connect to the UDOO X86. @sukk741 * @Andrea Rovai with only 2 SATA interfaces and no support for port multipliers in my mind that means you'll only be able to use 2 SATA drives. In my opinion somewhat limiting on using the UDOO X86 as a NAS or Media Server.
I too have been looking for a x86 affordable board to build a NAS/home server and the UDOO x86 seem to be the one. For my part I don't see having only one onboard SATA (that does not support port multiplier) and a M2 slot being a handicap for multi disc NAS applications because the board has the advantage of being USB3 capable. For Network attached storage I think USB3 (UASP compliant) is plenty fast and I can see myself plugging a whole bunch of drive into (self powered) USB3 hubs and use the internal SATA or M2 for my system drive. On previous boards SATA was a must have for NAS application because no boards (except XU4) were USB3 capable and USB2 was too slow for decent NAS applications, having USB3 solves that problem, for me at least.
@Christophe it's a little frustrating to me because less powerful boards do support port multiplier like the Banana Pi Pro
@reubadoob I currently run two Banana Pi Pro at home for media server, file servers, they are great/cheap devices but I will happily ditch them for celeron's Udoo x86 .... much. much higher computing power, mSata, PCIe, USB3 ---> this is the board I've been looking for for a long time. And running x86 linux will be realy nice since a number of interesting software packages were never ported to ARM, so it's one more check mark in the UDOO x86 column. I understand your frustration but since USB3 is now supported there is no real need for SATA multiplier anymore. Having mSATA/SATA for a system drive is nice, other than that the USB3 bandwidth is more than enough for network data transfer over gigabit lan without slowing anything down and using USB3 hubs on the board's 3 USB ports you can make many, many, terabytes of data available on your network.
@Christophe Thanks for the excellent points in regards to using the USB ports. Also thanks for perspective from owning Banana Pies. Definitely gives me renewed hope in UDOO X86 as a NAS/Media Server
True, but all things considered, UDOO X86 gives you far more options for storage. Banana Pi has: Micro SD SATA 2.0 (with a separate power connector) and that's it. While UDOO X86 features: Micro SD SATA 3.0 SSD through M2 Key B eMMC (only Advanced Plus and Ultra).
@Andrea Rovai : I would put also USB 3.0 in the list of benefits for the UDOO X86. Can also be used to attach storage to it and obtain decent data access speeds over network
