arrgg, what an annoying prior 48 hours.
I have a Adaptec 8805 that has been hooked to a Intel RES3tv360 (36 port , SAS 3 expander) for a little over a year with good results. This weekend i received 8x " new" 3tb Hitachi Drives i wanted to add to my array/the expander.
So i have 2 x questions / issues:
1) is this true that 24 Hard drives is the max that can be connected to the expander? ( i was shocked to find this tiny line buried in the manual for the RES3TV360. Why call it a 36 port expander and never mention that 24 drives are the max anywhere (but for this single, small line buried deep in the manual) :

2) Am i using the right port on the expander to connect to my Adaptec 8805? The manual says this CN4 port is only 1x1 not 1x4 so am I now limiting the bandwidth to my raid card from the expander by using this 1x1 port vs using a 1x4 port? (btw, i dont recall exactly why i choose this specific port to connect to my raid card, i do recall that when first setting this server up a year ago, i had to keep moving the connections around on the expander card until i found a setup where all 20 x of my inital drives shows up, since then its worked fine):

Also if anyone else is using a Intel RES3tv360 connected to a raid card, please if you could post your cable connection setup and any other relevant info you can (ie number of HDDs , performance , any issues or qwerks).
Thank you all for your time and help with this.
EDIT: btw, those screen shot snips are both from the manual PDF for the INTC expander, link is at:
http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/res3tv360/sb/res3tv360_ug.pdf
(screen shots have my notes added in RED and iBLACK)
I have a Adaptec 8805 that has been hooked to a Intel RES3tv360 (36 port , SAS 3 expander) for a little over a year with good results. This weekend i received 8x " new" 3tb Hitachi Drives i wanted to add to my array/the expander.
So i have 2 x questions / issues:
1) is this true that 24 Hard drives is the max that can be connected to the expander? ( i was shocked to find this tiny line buried in the manual for the RES3TV360. Why call it a 36 port expander and never mention that 24 drives are the max anywhere (but for this single, small line buried deep in the manual) :

2) Am i using the right port on the expander to connect to my Adaptec 8805? The manual says this CN4 port is only 1x1 not 1x4 so am I now limiting the bandwidth to my raid card from the expander by using this 1x1 port vs using a 1x4 port? (btw, i dont recall exactly why i choose this specific port to connect to my raid card, i do recall that when first setting this server up a year ago, i had to keep moving the connections around on the expander card until i found a setup where all 20 x of my inital drives shows up, since then its worked fine):

Also if anyone else is using a Intel RES3tv360 connected to a raid card, please if you could post your cable connection setup and any other relevant info you can (ie number of HDDs , performance , any issues or qwerks).
Thank you all for your time and help with this.
EDIT: btw, those screen shot snips are both from the manual PDF for the INTC expander, link is at:
http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/res3tv360/sb/res3tv360_ug.pdf
(screen shots have my notes added in RED and iBLACK)
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