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SAS drives for desktop PC

Chiyawa
By Chiyawa
in Storage Devices
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Posted

Hi,

 

my office is throwing away old SAS hard disks. I'm thinking of salvaging those and make use of those as a NAS (or temporary backup solution).

 

Here's the thing:

1. My company doesn't have any spare servers, but we do have old desktops. I'm thinking of using PCIe SAS adapter. Can I use the port where the graphic card sits? The system has one PCIe x16 slot and one x1 slot, and one PCI slot. It has an internal iGPU, so we don't need an extra GPU card.

2. I noted that the SAS card only uses x4 lanes, but it is in PCIe 3.0. That old PC only has PCIe 2.0. I know it'll works, but will it bottleneck down at some point?

3. There are not much mounting brackets in the desktop to mount the drives. I'm thinking of drill the base of the chasis and screw the drives to the hole. The question is, I heard that SAS HDD creates a lot of vibration (especially 10krpm HDD). Do I need to add in some rubber washer?

4. Will Windows 7 Pro support SAS drives natively, or do I need to hunt for drivers? Or can Windows 10 pro supports it natively?

 

Anyway, does anyone know any good SAS PCIe cards? I don't need RAID, just want to attach the SAS HDD and use it as stand alone HDD like a normal drive.

I have ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_spectrum

 

I apologies if my comments or post offends you in any way, or if my rage got a little too far. I'll try my best to make my post as non-offensive as much as possible.

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4 hours ago, TrigrH said:

how large are the HDDs? and how many do you plan to install?

They are mostly 3.5 inch, capacity varies. I'm thinking of maybe 2 (as the card that I saw only has 2 SAS slots), but I also want to make it interchangeable and plug and play if possible.

I have ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_spectrum

 

I apologies if my comments or post offends you in any way, or if my rage got a little too far. I'll try my best to make my post as non-offensive as much as possible.

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2 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

They are mostly 3.5 inch, capacity varies. I'm thinking of maybe 2 (as the card that I saw only has 2 SAS slots), but I also want to make it interchangeable and plug and play if possible.

how many drives can you get? and what capacity are we talking here?

Insert ram related question here: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1197132-setting-ram-speed-xmp-docp-for-dummies/

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A few drives actually. Capacity ranging from 300GB to 768GB.

 

I'm trying to get a 5.25 inch caddy so I can do swapping easily, but if I couldn't, I'm thinking using 2 SAS HDD.

I have ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_spectrum

 

I apologies if my comments or post offends you in any way, or if my rage got a little too far. I'll try my best to make my post as non-offensive as much as possible.

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13 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

A few drives actually. Capacity ranging from 300GB to 768GB.

 

I'm trying to get a 5.25 inch caddy so I can do swapping easily, but if I couldn't, I'm thinking using 2 SAS HDD.

the cost to support SAS is greater than the cost of just buying a some 1tb sata drives, waste of time.

Insert ram related question here: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1197132-setting-ram-speed-xmp-docp-for-dummies/

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40 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

the cost to support SAS is greater than the cost of just buying a some 1tb sata drives, waste of time.

Okay, to clarify a few things:

 

1. My company is throwing away those drives, literally. Rather than throw them away, I'm planning to use them, since they are still functional (the server died, so these disks has no where to go, and they are quite old).

2. I can use those to make temporary backups, such as when someone need to reinstall their operating system, but doesn't want to lose all their data. The system would be networked (of course isolating from the company primary network).

3. It's not for my personal use. I'm a system engineer and felt it would be a waste to throw them away. Buying new one (like external HDD or SATA HDD) although it's a viable solution, but I'm trying to save some cost since I have a few of those SAS disks lying around collecting dust.

 

I don't care if the drive fails, for I'm not going to store any important data into it, just a temporary storage.

I have ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_spectrum

 

I apologies if my comments or post offends you in any way, or if my rage got a little too far. I'll try my best to make my post as non-offensive as much as possible.

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39 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

Okay, to clarify a few things:

 

1. My company is throwing away those drives, literally. Rather than throw them away, I'm planning to use them, since they are still functional (the server died, so these disks has no where to go, and they are quite old).

2. I can use those to make temporary backups, such as when someone need to reinstall their operating system, but doesn't want to lose all their data. The system would be networked (of course isolating from the company primary network).

3. It's not for my personal use. I'm a system engineer and felt it would be a waste to throw them away. Buying new one (like external HDD or SATA HDD) although it's a viable solution, but I'm trying to save some cost since I have a few of those SAS disks lying around collecting dust.

 

I don't care if the drive fails, for I'm not going to store any important data into it, just a temporary storage.

well 2 port sas cards can support 8 drives.

Insert ram related question here: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1197132-setting-ram-speed-xmp-docp-for-dummies/

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14 hours ago, TrigrH said:

well 2 port sas cards can support 8 drives.

I think that is SFF port. The card has only two SAS port that looks like SATA port only, and they can only support 2 SAS drives.

I have ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_spectrum

 

I apologies if my comments or post offends you in any way, or if my rage got a little too far. I'll try my best to make my post as non-offensive as much as possible.

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Quote

1. My company doesn't have any spare servers, but we do have old desktops. I'm thinking of using PCIe SAS adapter. Can I use the port where the graphic card sits?

Yes.

Quote

2. I noted that the SAS card only uses x4 lanes, but it is in PCIe 3.0. That old PC only has PCIe 2.0. I know it'll works, but will it bottleneck down at some point?

Most older sas cards are 2.0 anyway, no stress.

Quote

3. There are not much mounting brackets in the desktop to mount the drives. I'm thinking of drill the base of the chasis and screw the drives to the hole. The question is, I heard that SAS HDD creates a lot of vibration (especially 10krpm HDD). Do I need to add in some rubber washer?

Excessive vibration can may hurt the lifespan of the drive.

Quote

4. Will Windows 7 Pro support SAS drives natively, or do I need to hunt for drivers? Or can Windows 10 pro supports it natively?

You will need drivers either way. Windows 7 will have better support for older cards.

Quote

Anyway, does anyone know any good SAS PCIe cards? I don't need RAID, just want to attach the SAS HDD and use it as stand alone HDD like a normal drive.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/172864807312

drivers:

https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9210-8i#downloads

Insert ram related question here: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1197132-setting-ram-speed-xmp-docp-for-dummies/

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5 hours ago, TrigrH said:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/172864807312

Hmm, I see this one has SFF ports. My cheap one has 2 SATA like SAS ports only.

I have ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_spectrum

 

I apologies if my comments or post offends you in any way, or if my rage got a little too far. I'll try my best to make my post as non-offensive as much as possible.

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