I was looking to upgrade my storage and was recommended to go with used SAS drives and an LSI SAS controller. I purchased an LSI 9211-8i HBA, 8TB Seagate Exos drives, and these cables. The drives are not spinning up at all when connected to the power supply. Are these cables not the right choice for this?
Edit: I have confirmed that a regular SATA drive works if connected with an SFF-8087 to Sata cable. Either I’ve somehow received 10 dead drives or I’m not powering them right.
Edit 2: I’m guessing its related to this: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/84038-so-your-new-sas-or-sata-drive-wont-start-spin-up/
What an irritating issue.
So my options seem to be:
- Tape mod the SATA power adapter or drives to prevent pin 3 from disabling the drive - cheap but tedious
- Use a molex adapter to power the drives - less cheap, I’d need new PSU and SAS cables
- Upgrade my PSU to one that supports SATA 3.3 - I’ll probably do this. I just bought a new PSU for the purpose of powering these drives, so I can still return it.
That is very interesting. I had some SAS drives I was using in a server but I retired them and was trying to use them on a desktop, and had exactly this, and they are HGST as well. I figured it was the adapter, but wasn’t sure how to fix it. Thanks for the link.
Nice, hope it helps. I was really surprised by how difficult it was to find out the cause of the issus, but maybe my search skills were just failing me. I’m glad the fix is so simple.
I think your search skills are fine. I pride myself on my google-fu, and I never managed to find this.
Sometimes you just have to hold your head right, I think.
Why are people still doing hardware RAID!?
HBA in IT mode.
I’m not. The controller is just being used to connect more drives than my motherboard supports.
HBA in IT mode.
Got it, thanks.
yeah Im still learning about how SAS controllers work. I only learned what IT and IR mode are after replying.
Yes you need the power cable fix to stop 3.3v from getting to the drives. Just tape it and it’ll be fine, takes 5 minutes.
That’s what I’ll be doing, I had to order some tape first. Just a bit inconvenient to have to do it for 8 cables lol.
No, you need the cables that only have the sata connector. You supply power directly from your psu to the drives. Make sure your psu is big enough for all your drives
Edit sff 8087 to sata like this https://www.microsatacables.com/sff-8087-90-degree-mini-sas-36-pin-to-sata-7-pin-cable-75-meter-sff-797-75m
Fuck amazon
They are SAS drives, these cables wouldn’t connect
My bad!! I’m dumb
All good, was an easy detail to miss.
I see two potential issues here, one of which I addressed in an older comment elsewhere.
The first is whether that breakout cable is a forward breakout cable, which is what you need when one controller is being split out to multiple HDDs. If it’s a backwards breakout cable, then there is no possibility that it will work for your configuration. The description on that Amazon page doesn’t explicitly say which way it is, also it does mention using the cable for one controller to four drives. So maybe this is indeed a forward breakout cable.
The second potential issue is whether the Power Disable (PWDIS) feature is causing the drives to stay powered down. Although looking at that cable you have, I can’t see where 3.3v would be coming from, unless you’re attaching a SATA power connector that actually provides 3.3v, or if the cable itself is producing 3.3v by an internal buck converter from the 12v or 5v rails.
It seems most likely that the PWDIS issue is at fault here. I’ll need to try a tape mod to confirm.
I am attaching a SATA power cable to the connector, I believe it should be able to provide that power. The same SATA power connector is capable of powering other drives. I’ll look into that feature.
