The miniPCIe SATA controller specification

It’s just my nickname. I am not affiliated or somehow connected with cz.nic apart from having bought a Turris Omnia :smiley:

Can someone from CZ.NIC reveal brand for SATA controller? I would like to use same, which will be in Omnia. I found so much controllers with ASM1061 like Delock , Bplus technology, Syba and so on
or… Will there be possibility to buy stuff from NAS perk except box? :slight_smile:

Hi all,
here’s the link for the miniPCIe SATA controller we had for NAS perk: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-PCIe-PCI-Express-to-2-Ports-SATA-3-0-III-6Gb-s-Expansion-Card-Single-Chip-/282120525477

Thank you for your patience and support.

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it’s cheaper here (-40%):

Hi!

Where can I find a suitable power cable for SATA hard disc, such as in this Turris Omnia: Installation of the router in the NAS box - Youtube video at 4:46?

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I want that cable, too. That’s why I also asked in linked video 2-3 weeks ago.

Please, can anybody help me with this problem?

I’ll suppose, I’ll make the cable by myself.
The black connectors are commonly used in PCs. It isn’t complicated to put them down from power cable and put them on cable with the white connector.
Or I’ll take the white one from a fan cable from PC (or power cable from other device) and put it on power supply cable from PC.
It’s depend what going to be easily.


Mareg

I did some testing on my own to compare the speed of the mSATA vs. the SATA controller in the NAS perk. I tested the Samsung EVO 500MB mSATA against 2x HGST 4TB 7200RPM Deskstar NAS drives in a btrfs RAID 1 mirrorset.

Write results:
time dd if=/dev/zero of=LARGE_FILE bs=1M count=2048
(A) Samsung mSATA 850EVO 500MB (btrfs formatted) - 12.05s - 171MB/s
(B) HGST Deskstar NAS 2x4TB RAID 1 (btrfs formatted RAID) - 13.45s - 152MB/s

Read results:
time cat LARGE_FILE > /dev/null (cat 2GB file to /dev/null)
(A) Samsung mSATA 850EVO 500MB (btrfs formatted) - 9.18s - 223MB/s
(B) HGST Deskstar NAS 2x4TB RAID 1 (btrfs formatted RAID) - 12.98s - 158MB/s

Simultaneous read/write results:
time cat LARGE_FILE > LARGE_FILE2
(A) Samsung mSATA 850EVO 500MB (btrfs formatted) - 19.46 - 105MB/s
(B) HGST Deskstar NAS 2x4TB RAID 1 (btrfs formatted RAID) - 27.15s - 75.4MB/s

So, according to these tests, the mSATA interface is a little slower than I expected, but the mini-PCIe SATA controller in the NAS perk is faster than I expected. Either one can write faster than the Gigabit interface can transfer data.

Here is raw bonnie++ output, but I don’t yet know how to interpret it:
bonnie++ -d /mnt -r 768 -s 1536 -u nobody

(A) Samsung mSATA 850EVO 500MB (btrfs formatted):
Version 1.97 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks–
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
littleo 1536M 141 99 220453 35 168454 55 933 99 894829 99 13884 218
Latency 63331us 57070us 55672us 9571us 116us 30081us
Version 1.97 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
littleo -Create-- --Read— -Delete-- -Create-- --Read— -Delete–
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 14772 95 +++++ +++ 11490 93 14647 92 +++++ +++ 10496 98

(B) HGST Deskstar NAS 2x4TB RAID 1 (btrfs formatted RAID):
Version 1.97 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
Concurrency 1 -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks–
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
bigo 1536M 123 99 155458 33 72441 30 893 98 817184 95 11468 233
Latency 73559us 60564us 175ms 11507us 10303us 30786us
Version 1.97 ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
bigo -Create-- --Read— -Delete-- -Create-- --Read— -Delete–
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 13097 90 +++++ +++ 11152 94 14000 91 +++++ +++ 9653 91
Latency 6841us 157us 1258us 610us 31us 6907us

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The “black connectors” you are talking about are not designed for such high currents of 2 HDDs. There is a reason for the special “white” connector.

I think he talked about the black connectors on the power cable. These are SATA Power connectors and can sustain quite a bit of current.

I think the white connector isn’t special. Just the combination of the connectors is unusually. I think You are wrong.

I see, you are discussing there the internal power connector as well. I would like to ask if someone know what this connector is able to power. I did test with 4 HDD’s and its working just fine, but I would like to know the limits. Thanks.

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And I am using the Innodisk EMPS-3401-C1

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The voltage regulators for 12V, 5V and 3.3V are 12A but they are not the limit. The input is protected with a 5A fuse. The PSU has a limit of 12V, 3.33A so 40W.

3.3V is also used for on board devices including miniPCIe including LTE and mSATA.
5V is also used for the USB connectors.

So four 3.5in harddisks is a bit hard for their power up current requirements and will probably cause problems. Four 2.5in devices should be possible if the USB ports are not connected to devices with high current consumption like 2.5in harddrives.

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Check out this other thread:


TL;DR: you need to make one yourself (or have someone make it) but all the pinouts are documented so it’s not major problem (for someone who knows how to solder that is).

Are you using it with four drives? Are you powering all of them from Omnia?

I test it, it works, but my understand of elektricity is not big enough that I can say that its stable to use. See @adminX’s post above.

Now I am using only 2 drives, as I don’t need more storage right now, but in future I will power the box with dedicated PSU (around 80W, 1,5A on 1 drive counted, so 41,512=72W), at least for 12V line as on 5V shouldn’t be so big drain.

@adminX Dumb question: Its possible to use 5V from TO and 12V from dedicated PSU?

I discuss this topic here: https://www.root.cz/zpravicky/projekt-turris-omnia-povede-patrick-zandl-byvaly-sefredaktor-lupa-cz/#o903957 (CZ)
There are some good ideas, and also PSU that can be used.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/PCI-Express-x1-6Gbps-Mini-PCIe-to-4-Ports-SATA-3-0-Adapter-Controller-Expansion-Raid/32793704153.html