I purchased 3 SAS drives by mistake ?‍♂️ Other than re selling them is there any way I can use them in my Unraid.

 

I am pretty new to this, and think I can get a SAS pci card, would that work, ideally don’t want to spend a lot. 

 

Would something like This  work, or use a cable like This from my motherboard 

 

Thanks

Edited July 13, 20187 yr by Blizzard

3 hours ago, Blizzard said:

Would something like This  work,

Get an LSI HBA instead, any LSI with a SAS2008/2308/3008 chipset in IT mode, e.g., 9201-8i, 9211-8i, 9207-8i, 9300-8i, etc and clones, like the Dell H200/H310 and IBM M1015, these latter ones need to be crossflashed.

2 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

Get an LSI HBA instead, any LSI with a SAS2008/2308/3008 chipset in IT mode, e.g., 9201-8i, 9211-8i, 9207-8i, 9300-8i, etc and clones, like the Dell H200/H310 and IBM M1015, these latter ones need to be crossflashed.

Thanks Johnnie, guess a lot of that went over my head, how is the best way to find out what chipset it is etc. Pretty new to all this build stuff, if there is any chance you might be able to direct to suitable Uk models on eBay that would be super helpful and very appreciated. Ideally not looking to spend a huge amount extra on the card if possible. 

 

Thanks 

Edit Would this do the job Ebay link

 

Edited July 13, 20187 yr by Blizzard

21 minutes ago, Blizzard said:

Edit Would this do the job

Yes.

 

You can search by the models:

21 minutes ago, Blizzard said:

e.g., 9201-8i, 9211-8i, 9207-8i, 9300-8i, etc and clones, like the Dell H200/H310 and IBM M1015

 

32 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

Yes.

 

You can search by the models:

 

thanks missed that they where model numbers, If i got one that was not in it mode already, would it be difficult to put it in IT mode/ Crossflashing it? Also do i need anything special with  the motherboard or should it just work regardless of the motherboard. and i assume is this the type of cable i will needAmazon link

 

thank you very much for the help, super appreciated 

 

Some LSI controllers can be on IR or IT mode, it's very easy to flash, like a bios update, crossflashing can be a little more complicated, there's a thread about it.

 

Cable looks like the correct one to me.

 

 

3 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

Some LSI controllers can be on IR or IT mode, it's very easy to flash, like a bios update, crossflashing can be a little more complicated, there's a thread about it.

 

Cable looks like the correct one to me.

 

 

Awesome thanks, and are there any issues i need to be aware of with regard to using SAS drives in the unRAID or anything to watch out for?

7 minutes ago, Blizzard said:

and are there any issues i need to be aware of with regard to using SAS drives in the unRAID or anything to watch out for?

They won't spin down, it's a known issue but not fixed yet.

1 minute ago, johnnie.black said:

They won't spin down, it's a known issue but not fixed yet.

So shorter life expectance, or just greater power consumption

 

Just now, Blizzard said:

So shorter life expectance

Debatable, most believe that spin down shortens life expectancy, only good for saving power.

Thanks, so probably worth keeping rather than reselling then. as i would need to add a PCI card anyway for more drives, and these came at a good price. With the 8 port controller could i add 4 SAS on one port and 4 SATA on the other? or do they all need to be the same?

 

AFAIK as long as you're not using an expander it's not a problem, i.e., you can use 4 of each on the same controller.

5 hours ago, Blizzard said:

So shorter life expectance, or just greater power consumption

 

 

Mostly power consumption. Lots of drives fails because of unlucky power-save configurations compared to the work load, resulting in too many head park or spin down / day. So the SMART info claims great health for the power-on hours or head flying hours, but very bad health for load cycle count, or power-off retract count.

 

SAS drives are definitely designed to work well in 24/7 use - they aren't low-end desktop drives designed for 2000 office hours/year of light usage.

Am I likely to experience any problems mixing both SAS and SATA drives in the same array 

 

thanks 

2 hours ago, Blizzard said:

Am I likely to experience any problems mixing both SAS and SATA drives in the same array 

 

thanks 

 

No. Enterprise-level RAID systems are picky about used disks because they stripe the data over all disks in the array and expects similar access times and allows very little time for a disk with a read issue to do a retry before the array operations needs to move on. unRAID doesn't have the same hard real-time requirements for disk accesses.