Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world Valmond @lemmy.world 2mo ago

Mistakenly bought a SAS Drive

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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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.
- 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.
  
  SMART will tell you how many hours it's been running
Yust buy a SAS controller (with cables), they are used pretty cheap.
- On ebay.fr they are like the price of the drive (around 25€ with shipping) :-(
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.
Why buy a used drive? Save $12? F that.
- I don't know where you live but I got the drive for 30€ including shipping, a new drive is over 100€...
  
  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
- I've gotten 3 drives from serverpartdeals, an 18 and a pair of 22s. They were $220, about half price.
Buy a cheap (used?) SAS controller. No big deal.
- On ebay.fr they are like the price of the drive (around 25€ with shipping) :-(
  
  Congrats on the new paper weight!
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.
- You can adapt SATA drives to an SAS controller, but you cannot adapt SAS drives to a SATA controller.
  
  Yeah I'm gonna put my chips on the side of "these 8 dollar converters won't work"
  
  But maybe OP is brave idk
- Thanks! Yeah looks like it's only the other way around.
  
  Just sell it on or cancel.
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.
- 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
  
  Well sometimes it can, it seems.
  
  I'll try to be back and tell :-)
You can get a used sas controller for cheap in most cases. Or try your luck with the generic stuff on Amazon.
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?
- The link in Sanctus post says its SAS to SATA but the other way around doesn't work for cheap converters 😞
  
  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)
  
  there is cheap controllers as well btw:
  
  https://a.aliexpress.com/_ExfUSap
  
  lots of cheap electronics for all your needs over there :)
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.
- Good idea, but what am I going to do with my thinkcentres 😁
  
  Use them as clients in your homelab?
SAS drives need a SAS controller. That can either be an adapter that you connect to a SATA port, or something topological bigger, such as a RAID controller. Both can be found relatively cheap.

55 comments