A bit confused on SAS and which cables to use

[gtr0]

Hello.

I have an HP Z420 Workstation that came with the HP LSI SAS PCIe card. Since I do audio (Pro Tools) I thought it may be a cool idea to grab a few SAS 15k drives. So I ordered a few Hitachi HUS156060VLS600 drives. 600 GB 15k drives.

The confusing part is, never having tried anything scsi based with exception of a zip drive some decades ago, I am confused by the choices of cables to get for this.

I only quickly looked but the card looks like it has SATA type connectors. The drives seem to look similar to SATA, but I have not received them yet, so I am unsure - seems like they are not keyed exactly like a SATA and may take one of those connectors that have power and data in the same cable.

Though it sounds like I have answered my own question I am riddled with doubt as to what I should be buying. Could anyone offer advise here?

Thank you!

 

[JaredDM]

SATA and SAS use pretty much the same physical connection. SAS actually stands for "Serial attached SCSI". However, SATA and SAS speak different languages. SATA uses the ATA command set while SAS uses SCSI commands.

What you need to know is this: SATA drives can work on a SAS controller but SAS drives WILL NOT WORK on a SATA controller. So if you're planning on plugging those drives into a consumer grade motherboard, it's not going to work....period. Yes, I know they sell adapters, but those are for different purposes.

You'll notice that there's an extra little bridge with some extra pins between where the power and SATA cables normally would plug in on a SATA drive. This prevents plugging a SAS drive into a SATA backplane while still allowing a SATA drive to fit into an SAS backplane.

So if you want to use those drives you'll need to purchase an bonafide SAS controller card.

 

[gtr0]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, as I said the HP Z Worstation did come with a SAS controller card - actually there is also an integrated controller in the mobo, but 1st gen, so 3Gb/s. The controller card is an 8x HP LSI 9212-4i so it is 4 port 6Gb/s.

I have done my homework as best as I could. I am just confused a bit for the cabling, but I am slowly arriving to the conclusion of what I need.

And I received the drives today, they are HGST 15k 6Gb/s SAS drives like this.

The controller is an LSI 9212-4i like this.

And I think I need this cable, 18in SAS 29 Pin to SATA Cable with LP4 Power

Is this the correct assessment?

Thank you!

 

[JaredDM]

Yes, that should all work.

 

[gtr0]

Thank you!