this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024

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Mistakenly bought a SAS Drive (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

55 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hello,

Bought a spare super cheap used 3TB drive a year ago, and just figured out it's not a SATA but a SAS drive.

How fucked am I? What can I do more than using it as a paperweight?

Cheers!

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

This is all assuming it's a spinning disk and not an SSD, so ignore me if that's the case:

Given SAS drives are usually used in data centre storage array applications and 3TB disks have been kinda small for that use case for a fair while, there's a fairly high chance it was in heavy use for a good number of years. I'd bet it's probably well on its way to being a paperweight regardless of your connectivity situation.

If you do get it hooked up, don't store anything on it you wouldn't be okay losing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yep spinning rust.

Wanted a scratch disk to aggregate all my sensitive information thats scattered and duplicated on smaller disks and thumb drives. Would probably keep it as an ultimate backup too (I got a real backup).

My thinking was that usually those disks are swapped out after 5 years when failure rates starts to creep up, but there's still is some life left, largely enough for some fun.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

SMART will tell you how many hours it's been running

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

If I get it up and running ^^ !

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yust buy a SAS controller (with cables), they are used pretty cheap.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

On ebay.fr they are like the price of the drive (around 25€ with shipping) :-(

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

You can get a SAS USB external enclosure but they're in the $100 range, probably not worth it for 3TB.

For internal use, you can get a used PCIe SAS Host Bus Adapter fairly cheap BUT you need to do some research. Before you buy one you should confirm that there is a driver for the OS that you are using and that it is supported on your processor/socket/chipset. These cards are server hardware - many of them are not supported by Windows and/or are not compatible with consumer motherboards & CPUs.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Why buy a used drive? Save $12? F that.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't know where you live but I got the drive for 30€ including shipping, a new drive is over 100€...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (6 children)

And then two years down the line you lose all the data - the pictures, the savegames, the porn collection. Drives are the one thing that shouldn't be bought used

[–] randombullet 10 points 2 months ago

Not if you have a proper backup plan.

I have about 200ish TB or about 24 drives and 3 of them failed all are used. I have a solid backup plan so no issues with failing drives. Saves me roughly 100-200 a drive.

New drives have infant mortality as well. An inverse bell curve would be the distribution.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Look, i'm buying two hard drives no matter what to anticipate a drive failure. In that case, if i'm anticipating a failure anyway, might as well buy them second-hand and, yes, save a ton of money.

The key is to look for a CrystalDiskInfo screenshot in the ad, which is indicative of a serious seller and also lets you know the drive's condition. If you buy from a professional, you may get a warranty.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I learned the hard way when the cheap PSU blew up and took with it the mobo, my drive and my backup drive. That was the year 2000 or 2001.

Since then I do have a good backup strategy (with most important stuff on amazon glacier).

So you learned the hard way losing your porn stash 😉 ?

Jk, and the drive is not for important stuff.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

PSU you is the other part you don't want to cheap out on... Guess you got two lessons in one there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

A lot of people learn this lesson sadly. It isn't "sexy" to brag that you have a gold / platinum rated high quality PSU. People would rather add a "Ti" or a "10" to their graphics card and then lose it all when it goes. Same reason why I have an UPS for home PC - sure, overvoltage, undervoltage, electrical noise probably won't harm the PC. But why risk it? Also having a battery to save your shit, or buy more electricity online when you run out on a prepaid meter is cool (speaking from experience, happened to me like 10 times already lol)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I never heard about pre paid electric meters for homes. May I ask where you are located? Small UPS seems like the frickin perfect addon to that situation!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah, for sure. To be totally fair I probably got even more lessons out of it as I upgraded my SOs Duron 650 to an Athlon (so new mobo) and that was what blew up the chep PSU I guess...

Usually I now go 750-900w platinum just because it's so nice when the fan doesn't start before 400 watts (and it heats less ofc).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I salvaged an 18 year old WD hard disk from a pentium IV system.

It works to this day in my retro gaming machine lol

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I've gotten 3 drives from serverpartdeals, an 18 and a pair of 22s. They were $220, about half price.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Buy a cheap (used?) SAS controller. No big deal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

On ebay.fr they are like the price of the drive (around 25€ with shipping) :-(

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Congrats on the new paper weight!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Ha ha thanks I guess 😁

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The search brings up these scary words. It says you are 100% fucked.

At the same time, I see those cheap ass converters on Amazon >.> I have never tried one.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You can adapt SATA drives to an SAS controller, but you cannot adapt SAS drives to a SATA controller.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah I'm gonna put my chips on the side of "these 8 dollar converters won't work"

But maybe OP is brave idk

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Ya maybe I'll sit this one out 😁

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks! Yeah looks like it's only the other way around.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I've seen SAS-SATA adapters for sale online. I got a 120GB used SAS, and it's cheaper to buy another drive than to order the adapter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Those adapters only work for plugging SATA drives into SAS controllers. You can't use an adapter to plug a SAS drive into a SATA port

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well sometimes it can, it seems.

I'll try to be back and tell :-)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

No, they can't. You need a SAS controller for a SAS drive, there is no way around it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Check out y0dins post below, there are SAS drives with SATA compatibility it seems.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

You can get a used sas controller for cheap in most cases. Or try your luck with the generic stuff on Amazon.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Haven't tried it myself, but there is cheap converters available on AliExpress:

https://a.aliexpress.com/_EwYtdeV

Might be worth it to avoid using it as a paperweight?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The link in Sanctus post says its SAS to SATA but the other way around doesn't work for cheap converters 😞

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

sorry if I misunderstood, but wasn't his drive sas, and he needed to go to sata connections? this does that.

sas hdd => sata controller connetions

the converter is not the culprit, the drive needs a sata logo on the label for it to work the other way, which is mentioned on the sales page.

if the drive had that logo or not is not mentioned as far as I can see

(edit, thought it was OP replying at first, so changed that, and added requirements for the adapter)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's exactly what I'd like to find, but you cannot, it seems, connect a SAS disk to a SATA slot on the mobo, only the other way around, with this adapter.

The comments also seems to say exactly that (you have to put 4 or 5 stars to comment, so that's a useless measure, gotta read those translated comments).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (7 children)

you can, if you read my edited post, as long as the SATA logo is present on the label of the sas drive

as mentioned in the description of the product

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

there is cheap controllers as well btw:

https://a.aliexpress.com/_ExfUSap

lots of cheap electronics for all your needs over there :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Ha ha yes my home is filled with unsuspectedly good stuff from aliexpress 😅

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What you do is to look on the local used hardware sites, search for server, fet a cheap one with SAS interfaces, and now you have the start of a homelab.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Good idea, but what am I going to do with my thinkcentres 😁

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