Lenovo 03X3834 LSI 6Gbps 16 Port PCI-E SAS Expander Card $13.88

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ealvar

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Mar 4, 2013
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Oddworld

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Jan 16, 2018
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I tried to purchase, but received a notice that "The seller's store is closed for vacation. Check back later."

Is there a way to order now, even if it takes awhile to ship?
 
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storemorefiles

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Jan 27, 2021
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Oddworld said:
I tried to purchase, but received a notice that "The seller's store is closed for vacation. Check back later."

Is there a way to order now, even if it takes awhile to ship?
Click to expand...
Not unless you buy from another seller.

Blame eBay. There's an option for sellers to accept orders while they're on vacation mode, but buyers don't read and will complain if their item isn't shipped out within a day like Amazon. eBay also dings the seller for missing handling times even while they're on vacation mode. As a seller, it's much easier for me to just prevent orders.
 
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storemorefiles

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Jan 27, 2021
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I received mine earlier this week and it looks fine, actually cleaner than the listing pic. I haven't installed it yet since I ended up going in a different direction with my file server.
 
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storemorefiles

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Jan 27, 2021
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mervincm said:
what is an expander card? Is this functional as a 16 port sas / sata HBA?
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An expander card is just that---it splits up incoming lanes into many more. The card here, for example, will input 1-2 ports from a HBA and turn them into 1-4 ports. Each of the ports can then use a breakout cable to hook up 4 drives. So, you can have 1 port (normally a max of 4 drives) control a max of 16 drives. The tradeoff is that with more drives will divide up the maximum bandwidth (from 1 or 2 inputs), but that shouldn't be a big problem with hard drives which run slow.

A 16i HBA will have 4 ports of its own. You can plug each port into another expander for a ton of drives. A 16i HBA may cost more than a 8i or 4i4e HBA plus an expander for the same number of drives.
 
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mervincm

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Jun 18, 2014
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storemorefiles said:
An expander card is just that---it splits up incoming lanes into many more. The card here, for example, will input 1-2 ports from a HBA and turn them into 1-4 ports. Each of the ports can then use a breakout cable to hook up 4 drives.
Click to expand...
That makes sense. sorta like a port multiplier on the SATA side. That explains the extra connectors, those must be Iinput.
 
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UhClem

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Jun 26, 2012
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Seller is back. Still a few left [edit:]. ... 2 hours ... all gone.
 
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thetoad

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Feb 10, 2021
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storemorefiles said:
An expander card is just that---it splits up incoming lanes into many more. The card here, for example, will input 1-2 ports from a HBA and turn them into 1-4 ports. Each of the ports can then use a breakout cable to hook up 4 drives. So, you can have 1 port (normally a max of 4 drives) control a max of 16 drives. The tradeoff is that with more drives will divide up the maximum bandwidth (from 1 or 2 inputs), but that shouldn't be a big problem with hard drives which run slow.

A 16i HBA will have 4 ports of its own. You can plug each port into another expander for a ton of drives. A 16i HBA may cost more than a 8i or 4i4e HBA plus an expander for the same number of drives.
Click to expand...
so, this isn't an hba that managed external drives itself, it just enables multiplexing from an internal hba which instead of connecting to the internal backplane, connects to an "external" backplane.

i.e. if one has a 2u box with 12 drives, this doesn;t really gain you much, on the other hand, if you have a 1u box with an internal hba with 2 connectors and 4 hotswap bays, this could take you from 4 drives on internal backplane to 16 drives on external?

do I understand that corectly?
 
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RedX1

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Aug 11, 2017
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Hi



Thanks for the additional information.



I was aware that they are different, but used the same chipset.

I could not find any link to the Lenovo firmware, do you know if the Lenovo 03x3834 can be flashed with the IBM 46M0997 firmware?

I got the IBM 46M0997 cards for around the same price, they seem to work flawlessly.





The knowledge shared here is really valuable.



Thanks again





RedX1
 
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