Hello, I bought 2 really cheap SAS hard drives (ST4000NM0125) (4Tb) and now I want to connect it to my B550 Motherboard that I currently use on my unraid system.

 

I found the hard way (bought adapters that won't work obviously) that I need some sort of SAS controller for them to work on a normal SATA motherboard.
I did a quick search on aliexpress and found these:

SAS CARD
CABLE

 

Can anyone confirm that what I linked above will work?
Do I need anything else?
Sorry for the questions but I never used a SAS drive before.

26€ for a proper 16 drives controller seems either a super good bargain, or quite sketchy.

 

Your diagnostics might provide more information on how Unraid see your HW.

The 9300-16i will work fine with Unraid, but it is a bad choice. It contains 2 SAS-controllers, both have 8 ports connected to it, so it'll use 26w power, which is a lot. a 9300-8i or older would probably be better. Also be careful what you select, the price of 26 euro is just for the cables, the actual card costs 60, the 9300-8i can be had for less than 40. The previous generation, seach for lsi 9207, can be found for the price of the cables (and if you get that, don't forget to select the right cable).

 

Your second link for the cables will work great, although most likely they will only be wired for one SAS channel (if you look at the drive, you'll notice extra pins on top of the connector, which is a 2nd channel). This doesn't matter for unraid, but if you ever want to use this 2nd channel, you'll need new cables. Also, if you want to connect SATA drives to them (which will work fine too) don't get the 1M version, since SATA is only supported for 1m total, including the traces on the motherboard, meaning you may get weird issues (SAS cables can be much longer).

 

Thanks for the help.
I will buy the hardware and do a small follow up.

Hello again,
Bought the hardware, the hard drives still didn't show up on unraid, did some extra research and found a thread with a simple solution, use IDE to Sata power adapters, then everything started working.
Also read that it was a must to install the Spin Down SAS Drives Plugin, wich I did.
Eveything seems to be working fine now, I don't want to jynx it, but everything seems normal

Any other advice?
Anything else I should install or keep an eye on?

 

Thanks guys!

Edited October 28, 20241 yr by NRBP5

15 hours ago, NRBP5 said:

Any other advice?
Anything else I should install or keep an eye on?

Not really, just make sure you have the latest firmware. Otherwise, you have to get used to that SAS drives behave differently than SATA ones. With SATA, if something takes longer, the computer waits for it, SAS says I'll get back to you, and the computer can do other things. So you'll notice it is more efficient and so the computer may behave slightly faster or different than you're used to.

 

This also means that with failed SATA drives, it affects everything and you notice soon enough. But for SAS drives, they try to keep working, so if the drive fails, but the electronics still work, you might not notice anything until you need data from the drive. Of course with unraid you get the notifications something is wrong, and you won't lose data, but it is very different.