I have an ubuntu 12.04 machine with a raid using mdadm. The motherboard has 8 sata ports which are all being used, and I would like to add more hard drives to it.
What's the easiest/best way to add a few extra sata hard drives to a normal desktop machine? I'm asking about sata drives because sas drives seem overly expensive per Gb, and I'd be paying for speed when what I need is storage space. Plus I'm not sure what extra hardware I'd need for sas stuff.
I don't think I need a special raid card, I am happy with the performance of mdadm softraid, I think that I just need more ports really, unless someone has a better idea. Would the cheap sata port cards from ebay work fine in this case (sil4114 I think)?
I have heard of sata port multipliers, although I am a bit suspicious of compatibility issues that might arise from their use, plus I'm not sure if my motherboard even supports them, as I believe the sata ports need to be compatible.
I've had trouble searching for this as every search I have done has come up with how to add drives to a machine, not how to add ports to a machine.
