Have any HBA cards ever been made in the M.2 form factor? Interested in the idea as it would enable very compact builds using the motherboards from NUC clones
If you mean M.2 → SATA, refer to this thread on Level1Tech for discussion on the topic.
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Thank you, that’s exactly what I needed to know. I had read some stuff saying that only the LSI/Enterprise type cards were any good, but I’m planning to try to build a really tiny NAS (as in, put it in the same case as my main PC - separate PSU of course) and the bigger cards might not fit.
When I read your original post, I was thinking you wanted something like this M.2 to SATA.
You obviously cannot plug in a PCIe card to a NUC.
How about an M.2 to PCI-E X4 adapter? There are versions with an extension cable. I can imagine a scenario when this is your only option to get an X4 link from the CPU.
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That’s what I was thinking in order to pair a proper HBA card with the smaller motherboard, I was just curious if anyone had ever shrunk the format down onto the M.2 card itself
A “true HBA” in that it would support SAS drives, no. Pretty sure there’s nothing that’s physically small enough (taking thermal considerations into account) to fit in an M.2 slot. An M.2 to PCIe x4 adapter could work, but be mindful of signal integrity - watch for PCIe error spam in your dmesg if you do this.
The M.2 SATA controllers are a mixed bag. The ASMedia ASM116x ones are generally okay under TrueNAS CE, but I’d still recommend you avoid JMicron - and definitely stay far, FAR away from anything that uses a SATA port multiplier.
It’s mostly around the manufacturing quality of the individual unit - PCB layering/thickness is a factor. Connect the cables before you put the card in the M.2 socket, and make sure that you have both a heatsink on the chip and good airflow (which is sometimes a challenge in M.2 builds)