[svlug] Multi drive PCI SATA card or 6 port SATA motherboard

[Marc MERLIN]

Interestingly enough, when reading on the subject, I ended up on Rick's page :)
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

Anyway, my problem is the following:
I would like to plug 5 and later 10 SATA drives into a system that has PCI
(not PCI-e), and no on board SATA support.
Cards that support more than 4 SATA drives seem to require expensive
infiniband cables to go to 4 drives each, like this one:
http://froogle.google.com/froogle_cluster?q=multi+sata+controller&pid=4902321726597373009&oid=13813813066434320484&btnG=Search+Froogle&ei=ie0URMyBPIuQlAHn5rmwDg&sig2=F1JwzKwHh2aPecs0BImRlA&scoring=mrd&hl=en
then again, maybe it is the way to go.

It doesn't look like there is such a thing as a 6 port card (is there?)
I have also yet to find a 12 port card, which would be ideal, even if I have
to take the infiniband cable penalty.

My last option would be to get a motherboard with 6 SATA connections, and a
4 port SATA card, although
1) I have no idea what motherboard/CPU/RAM combo to buy nowadays and it can
   be a drag to chose and make work properly
2) I'd rather reuse one of my existing systems, although finding 3 PCI slots
   for 3 4 port SATA cards may be hard :)

If someone can recommend a good motherboard/CPU/Ram combo with some kind of
onboard video (not required but desired), gigabit ethernet, and 6 SATA
ports, I could go with that too.

In either case, I don't care about onboard RAID since I'm not willing to
trust it an will use linux sw raid.

Or maybe I should just buy 3 of these:
http://www.satasite.com/4-port-serial-ata-ii-raid.htm
since Rick's page indicates that Silicon Image 3124 is supported.

Has any of you done similar things and can offer any wisdom?

Thanks
Marc
-- 
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