Is it possible to connect Rock5b with RAID card?

#1

I’m not sure whether it’s possible. I want to connect Rock5b with RAID card like RockRAID 2722 by using M2. M key to PCIE 3.0 x 4 cable. RAID card is used to control HD cage with 4 SAS 3.5 HD included.

M2.M to PCIE

RockRAID 2722

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#2

Probably is. Don’t know what driver/hw the raid card uses.

#3

That card probably need 12V supply, which is not supplied on the M.2 interface and not anywhere on the board, so you’ll need to find some way to connect a 12V supply to either the cable (that small 4 pin floppy drive power connector near the PCIe socket) or to the card itself.

I have a PCIe to 4xM.2 card that also needs 12V, and I’m currently powering it (and the board via the GPIO pins) with a Flex PSU.

#4

It may be possible, but no one can say for sure since there is a lot of maybe

For example, I were able to use NC552SFP, but not mellanox connectx-3 pro or 4

#5

Seems like there is kernel driver source code for linux 4.15 so would need to see if you can port it to the radxa 5.10 (or 6.1) kernel

#6

Indeed, it is possible. Rock 5B allows direct plug of a M2-M 2280 SATA controller. Easy to find modules exist based on ASM1166 and JMB585 chips. No specific drivers required, all these modules work out-of-the-box with all Armbian or Debian/Ubuntu CLI releases I have tested.

However, use of the Radxa Quad/Penta SATA hats is not obvious with this board, so I would stick to a 2280 module with regular SATA data cables and a cage for Molex/SATA power. For the HDDs, an alternate power supply is required. On my end, I found that 4pin Molex from a 150~250 ATX or Flex power supply is fine and it can feed the Rock 5B as well ditrectly from the 20/24 pin ATX power cable (5V+ground to USB-C or maybe to GPIO)

Please check my modest contribution here Rock boards as NAS solution :wink:

This is working quite fine with software RAID and I am about to finalize a NAS including surveillance station based on Rock 5B board in a Fractal Design Node 304 NAS case. In the end, this is not really cheaper compared to a low power x86 ITX board, but it is perfectly possible!