From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Mar 31 22:55:54 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8C8E1106564A for ; Sat, 31 Mar 2012 22:55:54 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from feenberg@nber.org) Received: from mail2.nber.org (mail2.nber.org [66.251.72.79]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3C3EF8FC18 for ; Sat, 31 Mar 2012 22:55:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from sas1.nber.org (sas1.nber.org [66.251.72.185]) by mail2.nber.org (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id q2VMSmY6058158 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT); Sat, 31 Mar 2012 18:28:49 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from feenberg@nber.org) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 18:28:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Daniel Feenberg To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (DEB 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII X-Anti-Virus: Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Linux Mail Server 5.6.39/RELEASE, bases: 20120401 #7537973, check: 20120331 clean Subject: Many SATA disks X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 22:55:54 -0000 We would like to build a FreeBSD machine ourselves with many (~15) SATA drives, but NOT use a RAID controller. We want to be able to remove any drive and connect it to an ordinary motherboard SATA port and mount the filesystem using only the OS provided drivers and tools. I have built many FreeBSD systems, but never used port multipliers and don't know which controllers advertised as RAID controllers will support a plain pass-thru mode. Would anyone like to make a suggestion from actual experience? The system will be used solely for archiving, so performance is not critical, but portability of the partitions to other systems is necessary. Daniel Feenberg NBER