Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Anyone here know of SATA/SAS HBA cards low profile

I can't believe i'm saying this, but this sounds a little overkill, no? Whats wrong with setting up a share, or even iSCSI?

I doubt your HTPC is going to require that much IO bandwidth.

Well, I actually stumbled upon a different avenue, as you said I really don't need that bandwidth or all the drives hot at once.

I ordered 2 e-Sata multiplier (5 drives ea)from Addonics with the matching 2 port card on the server side. Cost about $150, should be here Friday and I should be(hope)I'm good to go.

I already have a 8 port sata controller card to replace the 4 port cards currently in the server for the bays in that case.

Update.....

Well I got it all up and running today and it seems to work well.

I installed the 8 port controller and the 8 port e-sata controller in the server and the 2 each multipliers in the 10 bay hot swap expansion case (also my HTPC case). Before today, I only could use 7 of the 8 sata hot swap bays in the server.

The 2 TB drive in the expansion case is working great. I was also able to install a second full size bluray reader in the expansion case that is feeding back thru to the server thru the multiplier. The newly installed BR reader is ripping BluRays in about a 1/3 the time the slim drive in the server was taking.

13 TB and counting, 8 empty hot swap bays to go, and 6 1.5 TB drives I can swap out for 2 TB drives in the far future.

18 Hot Swap Bays total (one for HTPC recorded TV, HTPC OS drive is internal and a SSD)

Happy so far!