Can U.2 port be used to connect SAS drive ?

[Felismania]

I heard that the U.2 port is actually a mini-SAS port (SFF-8639). Does it mean that U.2 port can be used to connect SAS hard drive except NVMe SSD?

[Sakkura]

The U.2 port is an extension of the full-size SAS port, which is itself an extension of the traditional SATA port. U.2 is backwards compatible with both SAS and SATA.

[Robman1]

I have a AsRock Z97M with a PCI Addonics adpator holding a SSD Samsung 128GB NVMe. No issues. IDK if that helps lol

[mikat]

28 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

The U.2 port is an extension of the full-size SAS port, which is itself an extension of the traditional SATA port. U.2 is backwards compatible with both SAS and SATA.

so does that mean that there is a sas controller behind the u.2 port?

(asking this because i want to connect sas drives to my rig but it doesn't have a sas controller so it doesn't work )

 

[Sakkura]

3 minutes ago, mikat said:

so does that mean that there is a sas controller behind the u.2 port?

It says nothing about the controller, just what the port supports.

[scottyseng]

2 hours ago, Felismania said:

I heard that the U.2 port is actually a mini-SAS port (SFF-8639). Does it mean that U.2 port can be used to connect SAS hard drive except NVMe SSD?

Probably not, but it depends on the model of motherboard (Or whatever you have the U.2 input on). The U.2 port for NVMe just feeds it PCIe lanes. There's no actual SAS controller on the motherboard end to support actual SAS drives. If it's on a SAS RAID card, then yeah, you'd be able to hook SAS drives to it, but you wouldn't be able to use NVMe drives on said RAID card (Well, there's one hardware RAID card that can RAID NVMe, but yeah, the market isn't there yet).

[Felismania]

15 hours ago, scottyseng said:

Probably not, but it depends on the model of motherboard (Or whatever you have the U.2 input on). The U.2 port for NVMe just feeds it PCIe lanes. There's no actual SAS controller on the motherboard end to support actual SAS drives. If it's on a SAS RAID card, then yeah, you'd be able to hook SAS drives to it, but you wouldn't be able to use NVMe drives on said RAID card (Well, there's one hardware RAID card that can RAID NVMe, but yeah, the market isn't there yet).

I got it. U.2 port is a SAS port but there is no SAS controller on the motherboard. It seems that U.2 can only be used to connect NVMe SSD for just being a connector of PCIe lane.