Thanks - but why in the world do they sell SAS to SATA adapters for? Is it for the cards that have both interfaces?
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Mount an SAS Drive via USB Adapter
Hi All,
I've purchased a SAS to SATA adapter - I hoped to mount this drive through a SATA to USB adapter I have. So far, no luck. The purpose - to test a pile of server drives for errors.
Has anyone ever pulled this off?
Thanks
MIke
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Answers
Yes, a SAS controller can work with a SATA drive by using a different connector. A passive connector that as no electronics or need to convert any protocols, voltages, or anything else. Also the SAS ANSI specification covers the software part of the equation and provides a mechanism for developers to encapsulate ATA commands within the native SCSI CDBs.
Can anyone recommend an external enclosure geared for mounting SAS drives through USB, to a laptop or PC? The purpose is to mount the drives and check them for problems - I have a number of drives which I have swapped out of some no-name servers in order to fix RAID 5 problems - the maker of the RAID card indicated that it could be either the drive or an older version of their firmware causing the problem. With the firmwares all updated, I'd like to mount these drives in Windows and scan them for physical errors, and then wipe them and deploy them as replacements when needed back into the RAID arrays.
Thanks!
mike
I feel I went out of my way not only to answer his question (no such product exists, and if it did, it would not be suitable for his use), tell him why, and provide an alternative mechanism that is as practical as one can hope to have. Author then seemed to ignore the response, and ask another question looking for a vendor that has something that can not possibly exist.
On this basis, I feel points should be awarded.
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by: dlethePosted on 2009-10-29 at 13:31:45ID: 25697933
Won't work for many reasons.
A USB -> SATA uses a bridge chip that translates both physical interface and software protocol from SCSI to ATA instruction set. So if you go from SAS -> SATA -> USB, then you are adding another protocol conversion. You would effectively be translating SCSI -> ATA -> SCSI. The vast majority of bridge chips don't let the low-level commands to do things like run embedded self test, or report SCSI Log pages, let alone examine bad block lists.
You won't be able to do diagnostics (i know, I've been writing storage diagnostic software since late 90's) even if you hacked something together that worked well enough to issue reads/writes/inquiries.
You are going to have to get a dumb SAS controller card, one w/o RAID, LSI has a large number to choose from .. to test SAS disks. You must send native SCSI commands to do proper diagnostics.
If you want to test from a notebook, you'll need one that supports a docking station that has a PCI slot and put the SAS card there, or get one of those Magma boxes.