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RAID and Drive Controller Cards: SATA, SAS, NVMe

PCIe cards that add SATA, SAS or M.2 ports and, on many models, hardware RAID for desktops, workstations and servers. 219 products from $2.99 to $5,397.99. HighPoint, Broadcom, DELL and more.

219 products from $2.99

New to this? Buying a NAS and hard drives with crypto — what to check, what it costs to pay, and what is never asked for.

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Host bus adapter or RAID controller: what the card does

A host bus adapter simply adds ports and passes the drives through, which is what software-managed storage such as ZFS wants. A RAID controller builds arrays in hardware: RAID 0 stripes for speed, RAID 1 mirrors, RAID 5 and 6 add parity so one or two drives can fail, and RAID 10 combines mirroring and striping. Many inexpensive RAID cards do the work in the driver rather than in hardware, so check whether the listing mentions a hardware RAID chip and cache, and whether the card can be switched to pass-through.

Connectors, PCIe lanes and the cables to match

Look at what the ports are. Plain SATA ports take drives directly. An SFF-8643 mini-SAS HD connector carries four lanes and needs a breakout cable to four drives, or a straight cable to a backplane; the older SFF-8087 is a different plug. Link speed is 6 Gb/s for SATA and 6 or 12 Gb/s for SAS. The card's PCIe width matters too: an x8 card needs an x8 or longer slot wired for enough lanes. SAS controllers accept SATA drives, but a SATA port cannot run SAS drives.

Questions about RAID and Drive Controller Cards: SATA, SAS, NVMe

Can a SAS controller use SATA drives?
Yes. SAS controllers accept both SAS and SATA drives, but SATA ports cannot drive SAS drives because the connector and protocol differ. If you plan to mix them, confirm the controller supports mixing in the same array or only separately.
Do I need a hardware RAID card for RAID 1?
Not necessarily. Many motherboards and operating systems offer software mirroring. A hardware card helps with CPU-heavy parity levels such as RAID 5 and 6, protected write cache and large arrays, but a failed card needs a compatible replacement to read the array.
What cable do I need for an SFF-8643 port?
A mini-SAS HD breakout cable splits one connector into four SATA or SAS drive connectors, while a straight mini-SAS HD cable runs to a backplane. SFF-8643 is not the same plug as the older SFF-8087, so match both ends.