Port Multiplier Issue (Jmicron PM with ASMedia Host)

[iormangund]

Hi,

Just finished building a new xpenology server but cannot get the port multiplier card working. Was hoping someone might have a suggestion for how to get it working?

Hardware (though most is probably not necessary, including for thoroughness):

 

Lycom ST-172A SATA III-6Gbps 1-to-5 Port Multiplier [the offending item, http://www.lycom.com.tw/ST-172A.htm]

Startech 2 Port PCIE Controller Card

ASRock Q1900-ITX

2GB Ram

Silstertone DS380

4x1tb HDD (for testing etc, will be putting 8-12 drives from 6tb to 8tb each in the end)

 

The motherboard SATA 3 ports are ASMedia 1061 Port Multiplier compatible ports and work fine with ubuntu, issue only occurs with xpenology. Nanoboot with xpenology 5.0x doesn't register the PM card at all, with XPenoboot and 5.1x the first HDD on the PM card works.

 

From what I can tell the PM card uses JMicron JMB575A chipset (card appears identical to Startech PM card which uses that chip http://uk.startech.com/HDD/Adapters/~ST521PMINT).

 

I have scoured the forum and google looking for a solution, the best I have come up with is viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1361&start=350#p12685 but it seems unclear if that is not implemented in 5.x or if that was only for 4.2?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

[iormangund]

Let me ask a slightly different question then, has anyone got an internal port multiplier card working with Xpenology?

[sbv3000]

I tried a jmicron port multiplier and found that xpenology only sees the drive on channel 1.

 

I think this is because the jmicron drivers installed are for the basic 2/4 channel SATA controllers.

 

I've successfully built a few 12 drive xpenology boxes using this 4 port add on card

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00A ... ge_o00_s00

 

and some SIL 3114/3214 cards

[iormangund]

Due to the motherboard I am using only having one PCIE 2.0 x1 this seemed the best way to get 8 sata ports without losing too much speed (2 onboard @ 300mb/s + 1 onboard @ 600mb/s + port multiplier using 3 ports @ 200mb/s + 2 pcie @ 250mb/s) also giving me support for 2 more 2.5inch hdd if needed in the future.

This is working on the fact that I will be using 6tb nas drives which seem to be around 180-240mb/s in benchmarks.

 

If there is no support for port multiplier cards I guess the only other choice is to ditch the PM card and 2x sata card and just use the one you suggested to get 8 ports, albeit 4 of those at only 125mb/s (if my assumption of 500mb/s pcie x1 bandwidth divided by 4 is correct, and I know the sata speed numbers aren't as high as that in real use).