[gentoo-user] PCIe x1 or PCIe x4 SATA controller card

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

Howdy,

As some know, my inventory on hard drives is growing.  I'm at about a
dozen between main rig and backups.  Most are 14TB or above.  I was
pestering ebay the other day and noticed there is a PCIe card that adds
ports that is different.  I had a 4 port one but just replaced it with a
10 port.  It is a PCIe x1 card.  It has the narrow connector.  While
looking around tho, I found a few cards that are PCIe x4.  It has a
wider connector.  According to my google searches, PCIe x4 is faster
than PCIe x1.  It's why some cards are PCIe x8 or x16.  I think video
cards are usually x16.  My question is, given the PCIe x4 card costs
more, is it that much faster than a PCIe x1?  I'm not driving the drives
to the max or anything during normal use but when I use pvmove, it does
pretty much max them out.  I try to connect drives in a way that data
moving from place to place takes the best path but sometimes the future
surprises me. 

Is it better to have PCIe x4 instead? 

Thanks for the info.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

P. S.  My drive list according to my notes.  2 16TBs, 3 14TBs, 1 10TB
and 2 8TBs drive.  I may have a couple smaller ones laying around
somewhere.  I'm pretty sure there is a 6TB lurking about somewhere.