Hi, I have possibly messed up…
I scored a 10Tb SAS drive (Ultrastar DC HC330) and went looking for an interface card. I have ordered a 9212-4i4e, which has 4x SATA ports internal and one external SFF-8088 SAS port. I figured future drives I add were more likely to be sata than sas but my read of the manual is that the sata ports can also take SAS drives.
Trying to figure out what cables I need for SATA to SAS and got a bit lost. I then figured I could just loop the external SFF-8088 back inside the case and that looks like is really more for an external device that houses the SAS drives?
Help!
edit : link to specs
https://docs.broadcom.com/doc/12353334
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Honestly you bought the wrong card for internal SAS hard drives. You can make it work with some adapters but it is going to get messy.
As you have discovered the SFF-8088 port is on the back of the card for connecting an external box of drives. You can use an SFF-8088 to 4X SATA cable like this and loop the cable from outside your case back inside.
https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-SFF-8088-Female-Controller-Backplane/dp/B013G4EX9K/
But this won’t work with your SAS hard drive. That cable is for SATA hard drives and SAS drives have an extra bit of plastic to prevent connecting a SATA cable.
You can use this SFF-8088 to SAS cable and loop it from the back of your case to the inside but you see it requires a bunch of Molex connectors to provide power for the drives. If you had that many free Molex connectors then buy this cable.
https://www.amazon.com/Mini-SAS-SFF-8088-SFF-8482-Power-Cable/dp/B08NGJ7F5K
What you really should have bought is an LSI SAS HBA “8i” or “16i” card that have SFF-8087 ports designed for internal use. Then you can use this cable with connectors to the SAS data ports on the hard drive and then uses SATA power connectors to power the SAS hard drives.
https://www.amazon.com/AdcAudx-Mini-SAS-SAS-Cable-Internal-SATA-Power/dp/B09Q33VV5V/
You could get a bracket like this and an 8088 to 8088 cable to connect outside your computer and then it would effectively give you an SFF-8087 port. Then you could use either of the SFF-8087 to 4X SATA or 4X SAS cables.
https://www.amazon.com/CableDeconn-SFF-8088-SFF-8087-Adapter-Bracket/dp/B00PRXOQFA/
https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-External-26pin-SFF-8088-Cable/dp/B013G4F3A8/
All of the cables above are normal forward breakout cables. When you read the manual and it says that the 4 internal SATA ports support SAS drives it is technically true but how do you connect them? The people who would use that feature are usually connecting to a SAS backplane with an SFF-8087 or other type of SAS port. So they would use a reverse breakout cable but you don’t have a backplane so forget about that.
SAS is an extension on SATA. You can connect 4 SATA drives to most SAS ports or 2 12gbps SAS drives. You can’t connect a SAS drive to a SATA port.
J12 needs a mini-SAS breakout cable and each drive requires a PSU. J5-8 are already SATA ports. 8 total SATA drives or 4 SAS + 4 SATA drives are supported by the ports given.
Thanks! SAS is totally new to me and there is a bit of a learning curve…. I am confused though as the manual refers to the 4 sata ports on the card and mentions that sas or sata devices can be connected?
I’d have to read the documentation more for that board.
SAS drives can only connect to SAS controllers, SATA drives can connect to SATA or to SAS controllers but SAS drives cannot connect to SATA controllers.
If the 4 SATA ports goto a SAS controller then you could have 8 SAS drives connected at 6gbps or 4 connected “dual channel” at 12gbps or 8 SATA drives at 6gbps.
Specs are here if you are willing to have a look! https://docs.broadcom.com/doc/12353334
Also sounds like the external SFF-8088 is data only and I somehow need to introduce power. Looping the cable back inside won’t solve my problem?
Yeah, specs say 4 SAS ports only through the external connector and 4 internal SATA ports. The external SAS port can be used for SAS or SATA, the internal SATA ports are SATA only.
The external connector assumes you’re using external enclosures. If you want to you can loop it back inside the case but it’ll require the case to have up to 8 SATA power connectors which is slightly unusual (assuming you’re using the internal SATA connectors as well).
Appreciate it. I am going down the road of a sata to sas adaptor one of the internal ports. I have spare connections on my power supply so hopefully it will all work out. Since I know now sas drives don’t work on sata ports I guess the main reason the adaptors exist is scenarios like this.