SAS vs SATA - Does it matter?

[Kelvarr]

I was gifted an old SuperMicro 846 24-bay server with a TQ backplane and some old Opterons.  I plan on swapping out the motherboard to something slightly newer (but not a ton), some socket 2011 v2's.

 

I also took advantage of (but have not yet implemented) the Black Friday sale for the Lifetime Pro License of Unraid.

In an effort to start populating this beast of a case, I plan on buying some newer, larger hard drives (8TB & up).  I have a plethora of 2TB drives (almost enough to fill this case), but that's a lot of electricity for relatively little storage space, considering I can get all of those down into as little as a single drive (should I spend the money).

 

That said, the sweet spot seems to be about 12TB for me right now, and I have two options:  SAS 12Gb/s and SATA.

I know that SATA speeds are probably more than enough, but I can get SAS for the same price.  Does one have benefits over the other?  The primary purpose is going to be a storage array for Jellyfin, but will also likely house some central storage for other VM's (yet t be implemented).  Also my understanding:  I cannot mix SAS and SATA in the same array.  I would have to have different arrays for each (which I also assume means different parity drives for each array).

 

From what I can tell, these are some pros and cons, and I'm positive this list is not all-inclusive.  Any advice would be appreciated:

 

SATA
Pros:

• Can be used in any system physically
• Native support for spin-down in Unraid (not sure about this one)
• Slightly lower power consumption

Cons:

• Slower than SAS
• Problematic with SAS Expanders
   

 

SAS
Pros:

• Faster
• More compatible with SAS Expander (should I go that route)
• Lower read error rate/more durable

Cons:

• Need a HBA to read in any system
• Potentially problematic spin-down (?)
• Slightly higher energy consumption
   

Edited April 11, 2023 by Kelvarr
Spacing issues

[JorgeB]

For that use performance  should be very similar, you can mix SAS and SATA, generally no issues using SATA with SAS backplane, there's a plugin for SAS spin down but it doesn't work with every disk model.