sas connections... what am I missing?

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sdadept

Limp Gawd
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I run a lot of virtual machines (vmware workstation) for various reasons and business is good so I've decided to purchase some 15k 450gb sas drives.

The problem so far is that all of the SaS controller cards I see only have 1 connection even though they advertise that they work with 4x or 8x SaS drives. What am I missing here? I assume there is another piece of hardware or some special cable I need to get? Can anyone point me to what I need?
 
You have a multilane connector. You need to determine what connector it is and whether or not the drives you have are going in a backplane or not. Once you figure all that out, you just need to buy the appropriate cable.
 
hardwarephreak said:
No....the included cable will work fine.
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No it doesn't. :rolleyes: I own 4 of those cables that come with that Areca card (because surprise surprise, I own one) and some SAS drives. The card comes with a multilane SATA cable. A SAS drive will not work as the bloody cable won't fit. SATA has a gap between the power and data connection. SAS does not as the majority of drives have dual ports and actually utilize that little space for 7 extra contacts.
 
Well, many people utilize a backplane of some sort with SAS drives, so, the connector on that can vary, hence all the different cables.
 
Blue Fox said:
No it doesn't. :rolleyes: I own 4 of those cables that come with that Areca card (because surprise surprise, I own one) and some SAS drives. The card comes with a multilane SATA cable. A SAS drive will not work as the bloody cable won't fit. SATA has a gap between the power and data connection. SAS does not as the majority of drives have dual ports and actually utilize that little space for 7 extra contacts.
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Correct...which is why I edited my post almost immediately after posting it.
 
so if most use a backplane, perhaps i should too. whats a good backplane to use for a big tower case?
 
When I got my Adaptec 5805, I too had to sit down and figure out what the hell I need. One thing I found out that cables are universal, meaning you can use LSI cables with Adaptec, etc. Without the a backplane, I had to use two types of cables, split between my SAS and sata drives. With a backplane, all drives are connected through normal SATA cables. (controller -> sata connctors on backplane-> sas or sata drives.

Secondly, depending on your case, you might need longer cables (.5M were too short for me).
 
adi said:
When I got my Adaptec 5805, I too had to sit down and figure out what the hell I need. One thing I found out that cables are universal, meaning you can use LSI cables with Adaptec, etc. Without the a backplane, I had to use two types of cables, split between my SAS and sata drives. With a backplane, all drives are connected through normal SATA cables. (controller -> sata connctors on backplane-> sas or sata drives.

Secondly, depending on your case, you might need longer cables (.5M were too short for me).
Click to expand...

Not 100% true. You can also have SAS backplanes which means you need SAS cables to connect the controller to the SAS backplane!
 
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