I have a question. I have an empty physical 16X slot that's only 1X electrically. Can this card work with only one lane? I realize the bandwidth will be hampered. But in my case speed is less important than capacity.
It should work! It's my understanding that most PCI-e devices will work with less lanes, just with diminished bandwidth (as you're already expecting) :)
It will work as long as it can physically fit the slot (or you have an open ended slot). It will either be limited by the available lanes of the slot or by how many lanes the card is set for. Whichever is lower.
Great video. If I don’t have room inside my case, could I hypothetically guide the SATA’s outside the case to an enclosure of drivers that are powered separately?
3:15 I understand the point of using many features of unraid etc but it would work just fine using it just as standard extra sata ports to a motherboard? I'm currently using IO Crest sata pcie card and i find it not so reliable.
Usually going from the mini-SAS port to SAS you'd have an adapter that has a breakout to another power connector. Something like this: u.bitgoblin.tech/j8ukf
I believe it would depend on the drives you're connecting to the card and how many. Two or three hard drives might not see a difference, but a few SSDs would likely see an improvement, for instance.
Depends on the machine you're trying to add it to. If it's a desktop and you have a 5.25" bay you could get a 5.25" to 3.5" adapter to mount your drive. Otherwise, you can get a USB hard drive enclosure which will essentially turn your drive into an external HDD.
I don't get one thing, isn't SAS also a type of interface for HDD's? Why are there only SAS to SATA breakout cables? How would I connect 4 SAS drives rather, what card and type of a cable would I need? Confused
You're welcome! You'd need to supply power with SATA connectors from your PSU, which would connect to the little plugs coming off of the SAS connectors
Yep! You can use this card in any computer (server, PC, whatever) as long as you have an available PCI-e slot that fits this card and the proper adapters to the drives you want to use. I found this on Amazon that should work for SAS: www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-SFF-8087-SFF-8482/dp/B018YHS9AI The Lsi Megaraid Sas 9260-8i should work too, but this one has RAID built in to the card so it really wouldn't be good for using it with a software RAID solution like ZFS or MD RAID. Using this over the one I showcased in the video just depends on how you're planning on using your drives.
Thank you for the quick reply! I want to use on Raid 0 to plot chia. I would like to add 16 Hd Sas 300gb 3,5 15.7k Seagate Cheetah St3300657ss on my pc to plot.
@@BitGoblin Looks like it works fine from what I've read so far. Just checking because I have several HDD's and bought a 6 TB SAS by accident. Wanted to make sure they would all work together
On this particular model you can only break out to four drive on each port. Higher end HBAs will let you do more, which is when you'd need to worry about having enough PCI-e bandwidth to not bottleneck the drives.
@@BitGoblin Thanks. So what would be the best way to run 64 hard drives (3.5" 16 TB) with these two mini SAS ports? Assuming bottlenecks in bandwidth is not an issue. Also (silly question) but can the Mac Pro support this particular SAS card? It should since it has a PCIe slot right?
You would need a couple SAS port expanders and a bunch of SATA breakout cables. Something like this would give you 9 ports, 8 of which can be used for breaking out to drives (32 total), and the 9th used for connecting back to your HBA. Granted I don't have experience with DIYing a solution like this so I can't guarantee anything, but that is my understanding of how you'd hook up tons of drives like this. www.amazon.com/HP-761879-001-12GB-DL380-Expander/dp/B07MXPMJHD I don't think the Mac Pro will support it, since Broadcom's docs don't mention official support for MacOS: docs.broadcom.com/doc/12352054
Amazing video, still useful to understand a few basics for these crazy sas controllers. I however have a few questions since I'm looking for a good sas controller for my home server: I've found a bunch of cheap LSI 9211/9210/9207/9240 8i cards, as well as some "inspur" 9207/9211 8i (I guess they're basically the same as the others) and I'd like to know which ones could work on my dell optiplex 3050 (running win10). Could you help me with that? (From this video ik the 9207 shouldnt have any problems, but what about the others?) I've already tried a HPe p410 but it was only detected in device manager but i was unable to get it to show my hdds (even with the drivers) + it took like 10 minutes every time it posted to boot up so I guess I should go with one of the 92** 8i cards. Appreciate these type of videos, keep it up!
Also I am not looking for raid controllers, I just need to get the HDDs to work separately, doesn't matter if the card supports it or not. Thanks in advance btw
Hey BlueStone! From what I can tell between the four cards, the 9207 and 9211 are plain old HBAs (no RAID) and the 9210 and 9240 have RAID. The main difference between the 9207 and 9211 is that the 9207 is PCIe gen 3 and the 9211 is PCIe gen 2. All four support up to eight disks, and support mini-SAS SFF8087 connectors. For your use case, the 9207 or the 9211 would probably be best, and the PCIe gen 2 speeds should be enough to handle hard drives hooked up to it. I'd go for whichever you can find cheaper. As for driver support, I haven't used them in Windows yet, but I haven't had any trouble getting them to work in Linux and FreeBSD. You just need to make sure you flash them into IT mode so they work as an HBA.
@@BitGoblin would it make any difference if I get either the non raid (9207/9211) or the raid ones (9210/9240)? The ones I found on eBay (all Lsi) cost somewhere around 30$, some of them include breakup sata cables which is a plus. Btw I forgot to mention I'd like to hook up also 1-2 ssds so maybe I'll benefit from the 3.0 pcie slot...? Maybe a good thing to do is buy a card that I know is already flashed with LSI p20 IT mode to save up some time (apparently all the flashed cards use that firmware). What do you think?
Personally I gave experience with the 9207 and can vouch for their lack of issues. Saying anything about the others would just be an (educated) guess, so I'll stick with the 9207 recommendation 🙂 In theory the PCIe 2.0 connection would be enough for two SSDs and six hard drives, but that's cutting it very close. I'd go for the PCIe 3.0 (9207) if you plan on using more than two SSDs
@@BitGoblin so I looked again at the cards I was checking previously on eBay and found out that all the non-raid cards (9207 & 9211) were labeled as Lsi cards but were instead inspur ones (saw it from the product images). At that point I got curious about this brand and learned a few things online about these hbas and found out that they are basically clones of the LSI's. They say they work fine with win10, drivers are the same, firmware is also the same one for the LSI's. At this point I think it doesn't really matter what card I go for... Maybe I should just look for cards that offer the best/most "features", maybe the cheaper ones and of course one that is already flashed to IT mode so I don't have to do that myself. What'd think? ;)
Quick question, so technically you're saying that using the said card, i can now utilize 10,000 or 15,000 rpm SAS enterprise hdds and use like a regular ssd/hdd on my personal pc?
Yeah you can use this card to add more drives to your computer, as long as you have the proper adapters from mini-SAS to SAS or SATA or whatever you need. Typically you'd see this card in like a NAS where you'd have a bunch of drives pooled together with RAID or ZFS and shared over the network, but using it in your personal PC shouldn't be an issue if that fits your use case.
@@BitGoblin thank you for the quick reply man. I actually have no idea with this server stuff but I’m considering using sas drives as an alternative to ssd due to its 10k or 15k rpm performance, and almost unlimited read/writes. Unlike nvme ssd which is disposable, the endurance of this sas drives are really something. I’m from the Philippines and do you mind checking the links i posted if our local online shops (like amazon) has the right items that i should purchase in order to enable using this on my desktop pc. s.lazada.com.ph/s.2Vl2W s.lazada.com.ph/s.2Vl2r By the way, i noticed in the video that you only connected the sata port? What about the longer pins beside it, should it also be connected like a regular hdd/ssd? Is it a regular sata pins that i can directly connect on my PSU? My apologies for the many questions. Appreciate your response
@@BitGoblin i just noticed that then link for the card i posted is just pcie gen2. Is there a gen 3 compatible? I’m currently using TUF B40m plus mother board, so i think it’s gen 3 pcie Or is this one much better? shopee.ph/product/279733519/10501907619?smtt=0.51509920-1621276986.9
The first card you found should be fine. PCI-E versions are backwards and forwards compatible, so unless you really need faster speeds then you should be fine - as far as I can tell, the first card you posted was PCI-E gen 2 x8 which can do up to 4GB/s in theory.
With the mobo 'stealing' all your sata ports if you use m.2 etc., a card like this is crucial. I have 9211-8i's in 2 of my computers, and have a 3rd in backup in case one of them should fail. Purchased 2 m.2's for my z490 asus hero board, as manual said i could use m.2_1 and m.2_2 by forcing both to 1x speed, but only way i could get both m.2 recognized was by loosing 2 sata ports that i needed for 3.5" drives. so now i have a 1 tb m.2 in a slot under heatsink and gpu not being used :( Why is it so hard to let us use all m.2 and all sata ports. I paid for em all didnt i ??
Yeah that is annoying! Ideally you'd be able to use every port on your board without limitation, but stuff like that is due to a limitation with the number of PCIe lanes on the board and 24 lanes (what's on the Z490 boards) really isn't much these days unfortunately. But you said your GPU isn't in use... what all do you have connected to your system? I was thinking maybe if you could limit the amount of PCIe lanes allocated to the GPU (i.e. give it only 8 lanes) that might help things, but if it's already not being used then that doesn't help.
Oh I see, I definitely misunderstood then lol. But nice system! It seems like you put a lot of effort into it, and it's definitely a bit more powerful than mine :)
@@BitGoblin No worries. But now, To be able to use most slots on the mobo for a potential next build, i am instead looking at lsi 16 channel sas to sata controllers. they are a little more than double the price of an 8 channel, but it means you dont need to rely on any onboard sata from mobo.. unless you go completely bananas :D
Yeah that's honestly probably the easier way to go about it and avoid any potential PCIe lane conflicts. Plus, I tend to prefer using SAS cards because they usually support hot-swapping drives whereas IME motherboards usually don't :)
I don't know anything off the top of my head but some quick searching lead me to the LSI 9305-16i card, though at least on Amazon it's quite a bit more expensive: www.amazon.com/LSI-Controller-05-25703-00-9305-16i-PCI-Express/dp/B01BDZWJAO
Hi, i need to connect SAS drives to a pc to do a low format level and write cache erase, does that card work? I found the LSI SAS 9217 i8 in my country, is that still works?
It looks like that card might not work for low level operations, since it has a RAID controller on it. It might be possible to flash the firmware on it and avoid the RAID controller, but an HBA like the LSI SAS 9207 i8 that doesn't have RAID on it would work if you can find it.
will this card work to be able to use the data center grade drives that find their way onto ebay for $20 per 2tb? i am looking to build a fairly cheap storage unit that can do many tb using the sas drives from ebay since data centers often change out their drives with plenty of good life left in them. and i heard that to use the card it needs to be flashed to IT mode is that true or has software raid gotten good enough to talk to the card and drives without needing IT mode?
It should work with those drives! So long as you can get the proper cables to connect to the drives you're looking at. In my experience with this card (which is only with a couple of these cards) it DOES need to be flashed into IT mode. The two times I've used it was once with a FreeNAS box and an unRAID box, and both times the drives connected to this card spat out tons of CRC errors before the card was flashed. I found a great guide for this a little while ago, I'll look for it and post it here when I find it. Also, one more thing I'd like to point out: if you put this card in your system and it just boots to a black screen with a flashing cursor or similar, then you may need to update your motherboard's BIOS. I had to do this with my recent unRAID machine.
Directly off of the two SAS ports you can have up to 8 SATA devices using SAS-to-SATA splitters. But you can attach/chain SAS expanders to those SAS ports and break out up to a total of 256 devices.
@@BitGoblin Jesus christ that is awesome, im planning on building my own NAS seeing as the pre built are quite expansive and was wondering how to get 24 HDDs onto 1 motherboard and you been a great help figuring that out Thanks man!
@@BitGoblin Nice! ill look into that! all these parts on the server side of the tech world always eluded me i feel like a child again learning all these new things
Hey, learning things is fun! 😁 used server stuff is usually the way to go for stuff like this, but indeed there is a LOT to look through and figure out what you need
I have a question. I have an empty physical 16X slot that's only 1X electrically. Can this card work with only one lane? I realize the bandwidth will be hampered. But in my case speed is less important than capacity.
It should work! It's my understanding that most PCI-e devices will work with less lanes, just with diminished bandwidth (as you're already expecting) :)
It will work as long as it can physically fit the slot (or you have an open ended slot).
It will either be limited by the available lanes of the slot or by how many lanes the card is set for. Whichever is lower.
Pre-warning, great card but they run pretty hot. I'd add a 40mm fan to it if you want it to last.
That's a good tip! Mine hasn't been running too hot but I also don't hit it that hard too often lol
Thanks Bit Goblin!
You're welcome :)
Very well explained. This video helped me a lot. Thank you.
I'm glad I could help! And thanks! :D
Afaik the 9207 can act like a RAID card with proper firmware.
thank you
You're welcome :D
So basically, if I want to connect, say, 4 SAS drives to my regular PC, I got to get this card, SAS to SATA adapter, and hook 'em up? Excellent!
Well you'd want to get mini-sas to SAS connectors, but that would definitely work!
Great video. If I don’t have room inside my case, could I hypothetically guide the SATA’s outside the case to an enclosure of drivers that are powered separately?
That's an interesting way to add more drives to your system, but I don't see why it wouldn't work :)
@@BitGoblinwith a sas card, can i boot into the sas drives?
Tbh I haven't tested this myself, but I'd imagine it should work? It may also depend on your motherboard if it'll let you boot from a PCIe device
@@BitGoblin and for u.2 drives , since there nvme too, my mobo will likely see and be able to boot from it with a u.2 pcie card
3:15 I understand the point of using many features of unraid etc but it would work just fine using it just as standard extra sata ports to a motherboard? I'm currently using IO Crest sata pcie card and i find it not so reliable.
Yep! It should work just fine using it to add more drives to your PC, with or without things like unRAID or ZFS.
truenas handles every thing :)
Indeed it does, it's been rock solid for me :D
How does the sas drives get power thru the pci card
Usually going from the mini-SAS port to SAS you'd have an adapter that has a breakout to another power connector. Something like this: u.bitgoblin.tech/j8ukf
do you think if I use a 9300 model which is a 12Gb in a Pcie 16x 3.0 I could get a faster read/write speed?
I believe it would depend on the drives you're connecting to the card and how many. Two or three hard drives might not see a difference, but a few SSDs would likely see an improvement, for instance.
Man i have a new hard drive i got but i was shocked when i found no slots for it what can i do??
Depends on the machine you're trying to add it to. If it's a desktop and you have a 5.25" bay you could get a 5.25" to 3.5" adapter to mount your drive. Otherwise, you can get a USB hard drive enclosure which will essentially turn your drive into an external HDD.
I don't get one thing, isn't SAS also a type of interface for HDD's? Why are there only SAS to SATA breakout cables? How would I connect 4 SAS drives rather, what card and type of a cable would I need? Confused
Yep! You very well can connect SAS drives to this card. You would need breakout cables like this: u.bitgoblin.tech/j9ub3
@@BitGoblin Thanks! That seems like the thing we need. Also, is the power also provided by the card itself? That's pretty cool :D
You're welcome! You'd need to supply power with SATA connectors from your PSU, which would connect to the little plugs coming off of the SAS connectors
I found the video that I needed!!!
I have one question, with this card I can use my SAS Hdds on my normal pc?
Don’t need to be an server?
Does Lsi Megaraid Sas 9260-8i + Bateria works too? I can find LSI00301 here in Brazil
Yep! You can use this card in any computer (server, PC, whatever) as long as you have an available PCI-e slot that fits this card and the proper adapters to the drives you want to use. I found this on Amazon that should work for SAS: www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-SFF-8087-SFF-8482/dp/B018YHS9AI
The Lsi Megaraid Sas 9260-8i should work too, but this one has RAID built in to the card so it really wouldn't be good for using it with a software RAID solution like ZFS or MD RAID. Using this over the one I showcased in the video just depends on how you're planning on using your drives.
Thank you for the quick reply!
I want to use on Raid 0 to plot chia.
I would like to add 16 Hd Sas 300gb 3,5 15.7k Seagate Cheetah St3300657ss on my pc to plot.
That makes sense! The Lsi Megaraid Sas 9260-8i should work just fine then, though you may need a couple of them to run 16 drives
@@CantosdeLuzz Hi im trying to use sas drives on this card, only my sata drives seem to work on it, how did you make it work with sas drives ?
Nice video!
Thank you!
@@BitGoblin Thank you !!!
Can you connect SAS and SATA drives to the controller and run both types simultaneously?
That is a good question! I don't have any SAS drives on hand to test it with, but I'll see what I can dig up online :)
@@BitGoblin Looks like it works fine from what I've read so far. Just checking because I have several HDD's and bought a 6 TB SAS by accident. Wanted to make sure they would all work together
Yeah everything I've been finding online suggests the same. Let me know if you do put it all together whether it works or not, I'm curious to know lol
How much hard drives can you run on each SAS port? Let's assume these drives are 3.5" 16 TB HDDs.
On this particular model you can only break out to four drive on each port. Higher end HBAs will let you do more, which is when you'd need to worry about having enough PCI-e bandwidth to not bottleneck the drives.
@@BitGoblin Thanks. So what would be the best way to run 64 hard drives (3.5" 16 TB) with these two mini SAS ports? Assuming bottlenecks in bandwidth is not an issue. Also (silly question) but can the Mac Pro support this particular SAS card? It should since it has a PCIe slot right?
You would need a couple SAS port expanders and a bunch of SATA breakout cables. Something like this would give you 9 ports, 8 of which can be used for breaking out to drives (32 total), and the 9th used for connecting back to your HBA. Granted I don't have experience with DIYing a solution like this so I can't guarantee anything, but that is my understanding of how you'd hook up tons of drives like this. www.amazon.com/HP-761879-001-12GB-DL380-Expander/dp/B07MXPMJHD
I don't think the Mac Pro will support it, since Broadcom's docs don't mention official support for MacOS: docs.broadcom.com/doc/12352054
Is it possible to use the sas controler from the hba card instead when booting into the sas drive even if my my mobo have no sas controler built in ?
Amazing video, still useful to understand a few basics for these crazy sas controllers. I however have a few questions since I'm looking for a good sas controller for my home server:
I've found a bunch of cheap LSI 9211/9210/9207/9240 8i cards, as well as some "inspur" 9207/9211 8i (I guess they're basically the same as the others) and I'd like to know which ones could work on my dell optiplex 3050 (running win10). Could you help me with that? (From this video ik the 9207 shouldnt have any problems, but what about the others?)
I've already tried a HPe p410 but it was only detected in device manager but i was unable to get it to show my hdds (even with the drivers) + it took like 10 minutes every time it posted to boot up so I guess I should go with one of the 92** 8i cards. Appreciate these type of videos, keep it up!
Also I am not looking for raid controllers, I just need to get the HDDs to work separately, doesn't matter if the card supports it or not. Thanks in advance btw
Hey BlueStone! From what I can tell between the four cards, the 9207 and 9211 are plain old HBAs (no RAID) and the 9210 and 9240 have RAID. The main difference between the 9207 and 9211 is that the 9207 is PCIe gen 3 and the 9211 is PCIe gen 2. All four support up to eight disks, and support mini-SAS SFF8087 connectors.
For your use case, the 9207 or the 9211 would probably be best, and the PCIe gen 2 speeds should be enough to handle hard drives hooked up to it. I'd go for whichever you can find cheaper.
As for driver support, I haven't used them in Windows yet, but I haven't had any trouble getting them to work in Linux and FreeBSD. You just need to make sure you flash them into IT mode so they work as an HBA.
@@BitGoblin would it make any difference if I get either the non raid (9207/9211) or the raid ones (9210/9240)? The ones I found on eBay (all Lsi) cost somewhere around 30$, some of them include breakup sata cables which is a plus. Btw I forgot to mention I'd like to hook up also 1-2 ssds so maybe I'll benefit from the 3.0 pcie slot...? Maybe a good thing to do is buy a card that I know is already flashed with LSI p20 IT mode to save up some time (apparently all the flashed cards use that firmware).
What do you think?
Personally I gave experience with the 9207 and can vouch for their lack of issues. Saying anything about the others would just be an (educated) guess, so I'll stick with the 9207 recommendation 🙂
In theory the PCIe 2.0 connection would be enough for two SSDs and six hard drives, but that's cutting it very close. I'd go for the PCIe 3.0 (9207) if you plan on using more than two SSDs
@@BitGoblin so I looked again at the cards I was checking previously on eBay and found out that all the non-raid cards (9207 & 9211) were labeled as Lsi cards but were instead inspur ones (saw it from the product images). At that point I got curious about this brand and learned a few things online about these hbas and found out that they are basically clones of the LSI's. They say they work fine with win10, drivers are the same, firmware is also the same one for the LSI's. At this point I think it doesn't really matter what card I go for... Maybe I should just look for cards that offer the best/most "features", maybe the cheaper ones and of course one that is already flashed to IT mode so I don't have to do that myself. What'd think? ;)
Quick question, so technically you're saying that using the said card, i can now utilize 10,000 or 15,000 rpm SAS enterprise hdds and use like a regular ssd/hdd on my personal pc?
Yeah you can use this card to add more drives to your computer, as long as you have the proper adapters from mini-SAS to SAS or SATA or whatever you need.
Typically you'd see this card in like a NAS where you'd have a bunch of drives pooled together with RAID or ZFS and shared over the network, but using it in your personal PC shouldn't be an issue if that fits your use case.
@@BitGoblin thank you for the quick reply man.
I actually have no idea with this server stuff but I’m considering using sas drives as an alternative to ssd due to its 10k or 15k rpm performance, and almost unlimited read/writes. Unlike nvme ssd which is disposable, the endurance of this sas drives are really something.
I’m from the Philippines and do you mind checking the links i posted if our local online shops (like amazon) has the right items that i should purchase in order to enable using this on my desktop pc.
s.lazada.com.ph/s.2Vl2W
s.lazada.com.ph/s.2Vl2r
By the way, i noticed in the video that you only connected the sata port? What about the longer pins beside it, should it also be connected like a regular hdd/ssd? Is it a regular sata pins that i can directly connect on my PSU?
My apologies for the many questions. Appreciate your response
@@BitGoblin i just noticed that then link for the card i posted is just pcie gen2. Is there a gen 3 compatible? I’m currently using TUF B40m plus mother board, so i think it’s gen 3 pcie
Or is this one much better? shopee.ph/product/279733519/10501907619?smtt=0.51509920-1621276986.9
The first card you found should be fine. PCI-E versions are backwards and forwards compatible, so unless you really need faster speeds then you should be fine - as far as I can tell, the first card you posted was PCI-E gen 2 x8 which can do up to 4GB/s in theory.
With the mobo 'stealing' all your sata ports if you use m.2 etc., a card like this is crucial. I have 9211-8i's in 2 of my computers, and have a 3rd in backup in case one of them should fail. Purchased 2 m.2's for my z490 asus hero board, as manual said i could use m.2_1 and m.2_2 by forcing both to 1x speed, but only way i could get both m.2 recognized was by loosing 2 sata ports that i needed for 3.5" drives. so now i have a 1 tb m.2 in a slot under heatsink and gpu not being used :( Why is it so hard to let us use all m.2 and all sata ports. I paid for em all didnt i ??
Yeah that is annoying! Ideally you'd be able to use every port on your board without limitation, but stuff like that is due to a limitation with the number of PCIe lanes on the board and 24 lanes (what's on the Z490 boards) really isn't much these days unfortunately.
But you said your GPU isn't in use... what all do you have connected to your system? I was thinking maybe if you could limit the amount of PCIe lanes allocated to the GPU (i.e. give it only 8 lanes) that might help things, but if it's already not being used then that doesn't help.
Oh I see, I definitely misunderstood then lol. But nice system! It seems like you put a lot of effort into it, and it's definitely a bit more powerful than mine :)
@@BitGoblin No worries. But now, To be able to use most slots on the mobo for a potential next build, i am instead looking at lsi 16 channel sas to sata controllers. they are a little more than double the price of an 8 channel, but it means you dont need to rely on any onboard sata from mobo.. unless you go completely bananas :D
Yeah that's honestly probably the easier way to go about it and avoid any potential PCIe lane conflicts. Plus, I tend to prefer using SAS cards because they usually support hot-swapping drives whereas IME motherboards usually don't :)
@@ShallowRaversare u also able to see yur drives attached to the hba in the bios as well?
Can I use it just to hook 8 spinning drives to my windows 10 desktop. Drives need to be used as individual. Not in any kind of raid.
Yep! This card doesn't have a RAID controller on it, and presents the drives directly to the OS
@@BitGoblinthats also true if those drives are sas as well?
I haven't tested it personally, but that should be the case for SAS drives too.
Do they have one with four ports for 20 bay storage sas to sas
I don't know anything off the top of my head but some quick searching lead me to the LSI 9305-16i card, though at least on Amazon it's quite a bit more expensive: www.amazon.com/LSI-Controller-05-25703-00-9305-16i-PCI-Express/dp/B01BDZWJAO
@@BitGoblin ok thanks
@@nogoodjae np :)
Hi, i need to connect SAS drives to a pc to do a low format level and write cache erase, does that card work?
I found the LSI SAS 9217 i8 in my country, is that still works?
It looks like that card might not work for low level operations, since it has a RAID controller on it. It might be possible to flash the firmware on it and avoid the RAID controller, but an HBA like the LSI SAS 9207 i8 that doesn't have RAID on it would work if you can find it.
will this card work to be able to use the data center grade drives that find their way onto ebay for $20 per 2tb?
i am looking to build a fairly cheap storage unit that can do many tb using the sas drives from ebay since data centers often change out their drives with plenty of good life left in them.
and i heard that to use the card it needs to be flashed to IT mode is that true or has software raid gotten good enough to talk to the card and drives without needing IT mode?
It should work with those drives! So long as you can get the proper cables to connect to the drives you're looking at.
In my experience with this card (which is only with a couple of these cards) it DOES need to be flashed into IT mode. The two times I've used it was once with a FreeNAS box and an unRAID box, and both times the drives connected to this card spat out tons of CRC errors before the card was flashed. I found a great guide for this a little while ago, I'll look for it and post it here when I find it.
Also, one more thing I'd like to point out: if you put this card in your system and it just boots to a black screen with a flashing cursor or similar, then you may need to update your motherboard's BIOS. I had to do this with my recent unRAID machine.
On amazon it says "up to 256 drives is that true?! thats insane
Directly off of the two SAS ports you can have up to 8 SATA devices using SAS-to-SATA splitters. But you can attach/chain SAS expanders to those SAS ports and break out up to a total of 256 devices.
@@BitGoblin Jesus christ that is awesome, im planning on building my own NAS seeing as the pre built are quite expansive and was wondering how to get 24 HDDs onto 1 motherboard and you been a great help figuring that out Thanks man!
Oooh a nice and big NAS. I like it 😁 I believe LSI (Avago? Broadcom?) have a similar PCIe card that has four of these mini-SAS ports
@@BitGoblin Nice! ill look into that! all these parts on the server side of the tech world always eluded me i feel like a child again learning all these new things
Hey, learning things is fun! 😁 used server stuff is usually the way to go for stuff like this, but indeed there is a LOT to look through and figure out what you need