What cables to use for SAS drives and HBA card?

[roelversteeg]

I am planning a proper NAS build but i am getting confused as to what cables i should buy to connect a HBA card to the SAS drives.
I will be using a LSI 9300-16i HBA card (will be upgrading to more drives later and found a good deal on 16i variant instead of 8i)
For the drives im looking at 6 Seagate Exos X16 10TB SAS drives.

So far i figured out that the HBA connector should be the SFF-8643 type.
but what i cant find anywhere is what the other end for the drives should be? If anyone could inform me as to what connector type i need for those drives, and where i can find such info in the future that would be awesome.
Maybe some (ebay / aliexpress) links to a correct cable would also be appriciated.

[tkitch]

SAS Drives?

 

Do you have a backplane for those drives?  Or are you planning to plug them directly into your HBA?

[LIGISTX]

1 minute ago, roelversteeg said:

I am planning a proper NAS build but i am getting confused as to what cables i should buy to connect a HBA card to the SAS drives.
I will be using a LSI 9300-16i HBA card (will be upgrading to more drives later and found a good deal on 16i variant instead of 8i)
For the drives im looking at 6 Seagate Exos X16 10TB SAS drives.

So far i figured out that the HBA connector should be the SFF-8643 type.
but what i cant find anywhere is what the other end for the drives should be? If anyone could inform me as to what connector type i need for those drives, and where i can find such info in the future that would be awesome.
Maybe some (ebay / aliexpress) links to a correct cable would also be appriciated.

I wouldn’t use SAS drives…. Go with SATA. Easier, cheaper, more options, etc

 

You can go from a single SAS to 4 SATA ports with splitters you can easily find on eBay. This is standard practice and not a “weird, ghetto solution” so it’ll work great. 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133117291866?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=jFynvEpdSpS&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=B1xTkXm_Qfe&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

[LIGISTX]

2 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

I wouldn’t use SAS drives…. Go with SATA. Easier, cheaper, more options, etc

 

You can go from a single SAS to 4 SATA ports with splitters you can easily find on eBay. This is standard practice and not a “weird, ghetto solution” so it’ll work great. 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133117291866?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=jFynvEpdSpS&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=B1xTkXm_Qfe&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Oh, your 9300 uses miniSAS or whatever that smaller connector is. Same concept, just need to find a different cable. 

 

Whatever cables these are:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/225562380765?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=mkjc0LRXS1S&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=B1xTkXm_Qfe&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

[tkitch]

OH GOOD.

 

You don't have drives yet.  DO NOT Buy SAS.  Buy SATA and just use SAS -> SATA Cables.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Are you using these drives witout any backplanes? If so you want a cable like this https://www.amazon.com/NFHK-Internal-SFF-8643-SFF-8482-Target/dp/B097SKD9CH/ref=sr_1_13?keywords=sff+8643+to+drive&qid=1690299972&s=electronics&sr=1-13. Make sure it has the power passthough as you need that for sas drives.

[roelversteeg]

1 minute ago, tkitch said:

SAS Drives?

 

Do you have a backplane for those drives?  Or are you planning to plug them directly into your HBA?

No i dont have a backplane. plugging directly into the drives.
Reason for SAS drives is that they are about the same price as SATA drives but better for NAS use and slightly faster.

[LIGISTX]

1 minute ago, roelversteeg said:

No i dont have a backplane. plugging directly into the drives.
Reason for SAS drives is that they are about the same price as SATA drives but better for NAS use and slightly faster.

Define “better”. Because… they are not better except for extremely specific reasons, which home users don’t have. Main reason being you can address them via multiple controllers at once for a high availability setup. This is just no anything you need at home. 

Go SATA. 

[tkitch]

2 minutes ago, roelversteeg said:

No i dont have a backplane. plugging directly into the drives.
Reason for SAS drives is that they are about the same price as SATA drives but better for NAS use and slightly faster.

if you don't have a backplane, they are absolutely NOT better, and generally more frustrating in the long-run.

 

Buy SATA.

[LIGISTX]

2 minutes ago, tkitch said:

if you don't have a backplane, they are absolutely NOT better, and generally more frustrating in the long-run.

 

Buy SATA.

This.

[roelversteeg]

Okay reading all these comments im convinced to just buy SATA drives.
I think the Seagate IronWolf Pro 10TB (ST10000NE000) would be a good comparison with the previously mentioned SAS drive.

Thanks everyone for the quick responses

[LIGISTX]

5 minutes ago, roelversteeg said:

Okay reading all these comments im convinced to just buy SATA drives.
I think the Seagate IronWolf Pro 10TB (ST10000NE000) would be a good comparison with the previously mentioned SAS drive.

Thanks everyone for the quick responses

before you buy anything, determine what your needs are, and figure out what OS you are going to go with. 

This is important, because once you set up a NAS it’s difficult to change things later. Unraid is friendly to upgrading later on (you can literally just add a drive of any size, at any time), where truenas and its ZFS file system are less flexible, and is more economical to buy more drives up front since adding vdevs is costly later on. 

Then once you have a better idea of your needs, then you should buy drives. 

[roelversteeg]

19 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

before you buy anything, determine what your needs are, and figure out what OS you are going to go with. 

This is important, because once you set up a NAS it’s difficult to change things later. Unraid is friendly to upgrading later on (you can literally just add a drive of any size, at any time), where truenas and its ZFS file system are less flexible, and is more economical to buy more drives up front since adding vdevs is costly later on. 

Then once you have a better idea of your needs, then you should buy drives. 

Currently planning on TrueNas scale with single pool, single vdev of 6 drives in raid Z2 (40tb usable) as that will cover my usage for now + a fair few years.
Then add a second similar vdev later to double capacity.
 

[LIGISTX]

36 minutes ago, roelversteeg said:

Currently planning on TrueNas scale with single pool, single vdev of 6 drives in raid Z2 (40tb usable) as that will cover my usage for now + a fair few years.
Then add a second similar vdev later to double capacity.
 

Sounds like a good plan to me.

[tkitch]

On 7/25/2023 at 12:58 PM, roelversteeg said:

Currently planning on TrueNas scale with single pool, single vdev of 6 drives in raid Z2 (40tb usable) as that will cover my usage for now + a fair few years.
Then add a second similar vdev later to double capacity.
 

note:
12TB Drives give about 10TB usable each.