NoviceNAS

Gotcha, doesn't show in the detailed view, only if you have the icon view enabled. No, for those drives it doesn't display it. That aspect is covered though since all the controller connections are labelled so I can see which is which. I think by the looks of it the only notable drawback I'm going to have is that the lack of SMART awareness in Xpenology will mean any non-terminal failures won't be picked up until they're terminal. SHR mirrors should protect against issues with that at least. Doesn't seem to be perfect, but definitely seems to be "good enough".

I don't know hot to view Vendor ID or serial number for any drive, but I can confirm that it's not reporting the SMART status in the Storage Manager.

I should say that for now I've just used random disks to get things up and running.

The Adaptec JBOD approach is (by default) a RAW pass through, so they appear as individual volumes. This also means they represent as physical disks in Xpenology, and I can treat them as normal :).

I'm up and running! That was a right faff... Ok, short version. Previously configuring the controller through the PMC MaxView option in UEFI. I suddenly noticed that although I had set the disks to Enabled, they were showing as Disabled. So I set them to Enabled again. Lo and behold, they set back to Disabled. Something was going on with the actual controller config settings. I downloaded the CLI version of the ARCCONF tool, made a bootable USB, and went in that way. All disks showing completely healthy. I then tried creating a JBOD via the CLI, rebooted, and everything works!! So it would appear that the underlying issue wasn't actually Xpenology at all, but for some reason the UEFI interface not retaining/implementing the settings. Thank you all for your help, I wouldn't have got through the thought-puzzle without it!

How can I scroll back up to see if there's more info? It goes green and then quickly scrolls up with other modules. I've tried JBOD so far, I'll try other RAID types and report back, thanks.

It's fair to say I'm out of my depth here. I've installed the card, and when I view the modules loading on the server I can see that aacraid gets loaded. In Xpenology itself though, there's no sign of the controller, the drives connected to it, or any way of configuring the card. Could some kind soul please point me at the necessary resources to teach myself how to get through this? Thanks.

Really helpful replies, thanks all.

I've been offered one of the above SAS/Raid cards very cheap, and was wondering if they work with Xpenology or not please? If they work, I assume I'm best operating in JBOD and letting the Synology Hybrid Raid take care of configuration as I would with a normal collection of drives? Thanks.

Any proven setups you know of that will definitely work? Thanks

Revising my build based on current market prices etc... Fractal Design Define R4 (8 bays + 2x 5.25) GA-B250M-DS3H (Assuming this is supported??) 8Gb DDR4 Pentium G4560 Reckon that's closer to the mark? Now to find out how I can port my drives over to the new system (2 pairs of Synology Hybrid Raid mirrors)...

Cheers, I wasn't sure if the embedded GFx would work with that processor, hence the extra card. Main thing is if people on here are comfy that the motherboard will work out of the box then I'm happy. I'm going to try the suggestion in my other thread around resetting my Highpoint SATA controller BIOS in another PC, but if that doesn't work then I think I'll just move to a new build. Out of interest, why the N300 over the WD Reds? Most of the research I've done to date has been arguments of Reds vs Ironwolf drives, not even mentioning the N300 (not arguing, I'm here for the advice, just curious!). Cheers.

I've had a look but couldn't spot a build list and I can't see this motherboard on the supported hardware list - would the build below work natively please? Trying to expand my N54L at the moment but I'm rapidly starting to wonder if I should just switch as I'm outgrowing it... https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/q3P8NN

Oh right, never realised that, thanks. The manual is less than helpful. Should be able to do a temporary fit to one of my other machines to update the Bios settings. Cheers.

Thanks but I can't get at the card Bios. If I disable quick boot so I can see the POST screen, I can see that the machine sees an ide controller in pcie 1,and has assigned IRQ 4 and 10 to it. I cannot for the life of me (spent an hour last night) get the card Bios prompt to appear though. Any ideas?