Question 1

Where are the sata ports? I want to replace a very old pcie 2.0 raid card that is bottlenecking a Raid0 array with four 1TB sata SSDs in it.

Accepted Answer

The Adaptec 8405 adapter has 1 internal mini-SAS HD (SFF-8643) connector.

Question 2

Will this work in a Dell 8930? I would like to install 4 drives in RAID 5 setup.

Accepted Answer

I think so. The 8930 is an LGA 1151 socket processor, so Dell is virtually certainly using the Intel Z370 chipset. This provides two (2) PCI 3.0 x16 sockets at x8 mode when used simultaneously (if only one of those slots is filled, you get x16 mode). Now, I am confident the graphics card will work at x8 mode, but I don't know how much, if any, loss of performance there will be.

Now to get to the 8405 RAID card. It MUST have at least x8 mode provided in the PCI 2.0/3.0 x16 slot you put it in. I think it operates at full performance, though, even in x8 mode.

So there are your choices. One or two other things: (1) RAID 5 is kind of dangerous. Your disks are presumably going to age together, and if one fails, you will be sweating bullets until you get the replacement AND rebuild the array — I'm sure you are aware that if you lose two disks in RAID 5, there is NO data recovery possible.  I recommend RAID 6. (2) Unless you want to boot LINUX and WINDOWS off the same RAID array, you should consider the software/hardware RAID solutions available in both these operating systems. They do not unduly burden the processor, and you will be able to keep your high performance graphics card at x16 mode!

Good luck.
Ken Chayt

Question 3

How large is the heat sink on the board? Will a 40mm fan work on it?

Accepted Answer

As in most RAID array boards, their chip power demands rarely exceed chip temperatures that cannot be satisfied by the stock, or manufacturer's heat sink.  This is a powerful array, which can manage up to 60 drives without skipping a beat.  Adaptec is, and has been for years, the Gold Standard in durability, quality, engineering, and excellence in the RAID array industry. Its name goes back to the initial frontiers of that industry as well.

Addition of a cooling fan to an Adaptec board heat sink would be superfluous and completely unnecessary, provided the case is of at least a server class in size, vented with at least 5 exhaust fans, can handle 10 hard drives 4/8 for RAID+2forOS  2for Optical and a large oversized HS for overclocking and oversized video card for gaming, should you want to merge that experience with your server.

Question 4

Questions: - The maximum number of segments of the RAID? - The maximum number of drives in the segment?

Accepted Answer

The 8405 controller accepts a maximum of 4 drives. of varying capacity.  I use the safest redundancy for my data, RAID 6. For this you add up the sum total of the cumulative disk space
and divide by two.  Therefore, if you populated the drive with 2TB drives you would get 2x4 or 8 total space and a logical drive of 4 TB  This is a huge logical drive that can be partitioned
after it is built.  I would recommend RAID 6 because you can have two drives fail simultaneously and you will not lose any data.  Replace the drives and the array will rebuild the replaced drives automatically.  There are other members of the 840x system that can accommodate up to 8 drives. This markedly increase the options available to you in a nonlinear fashion.  Adaptec is the oldest and most reputable manufacturer in the RAID
card Business.  They offer excellent technical support via telephone for newbies, and experts,
their website is the most comprehensive in supports of their products of any manufacturer
I have ever seen in the 25 years of commercial computing.

I have owned a combination of their products for over 18 years without any problems
except until the go far beyond their MTBF point.

Question 5

What are the maximum number of SATA hard drives that can be connected to this RAID controller card?

Accepted Answer

256 with expanders/backplanes; 4 without (direct attach).

Question 6

How much of a performance hit is it to use this in a PCIe x4 slot?  I have a  Dell optiplex 9010 and need to get a dual head graphics card and this RAID card into its two PCIe slots.  I can't find a single slot graphics card that will do two Dell 24" displays that will fit in the slot near the bottom, which is the x4 slot, but this RAID card will.  But how badly will it inhale?

Accepted Answer

Is it pice 3.0 4x or pice 2.0 4x?   If 3.0 you should be fine, you might want to look this up but I think  3.0 x4  can still do 2500 MB a second so that's plenty .

Questions & Answers