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SATA III/SAS 6Gbps RAID Setup

Last response: in Storage
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I am in the middle of purchasing the parts for a new computer I'm building. I am sure I will be going the GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H motherboard. I require a RAID setup to make sure that I don't lose my data because of a single hard drive failure. I wanted to use a RAID 5 or RAID 10 setup but ensure that the drives be able to function at 6Gbps each. I see that with the LSI RAID controllers, the SAS to SATA fanout cable causes the SATA drives to operate at the SATA II 3Gbps rate. Is there a controller that doesn't cause this to happen?

Also, most RAID controllers have 1 or 2 mini SAS connectors. How do I connect 4 SAS drives each mini SAS port?

I will be installing an SSD for the operating system and want to make sure that I have a solid RAID setup to store my data and VMs.

Thanks in advance.

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I thought that they were saying that all SATA drives are going to be demoted to 3Gb/s? I'm sorry to ask but are you sure it's just a cable issue and not just the way the card functions?

Thanks for your replies btw.

Also, how would I connect 4 SAS drives to it? Thanks.
Storage Expert

You connect the SAS & SATA drives the same way: connect the single end of the cable to your RAID card's internal port and the other 4 ends to your 4 drives.

You'll have to do some additional research if you want to connect more than 4 drives.
The spec sheet says that your card can handle up to 128 drives, but I don't know what kind of cable or equipment you need to connect more than 4.

What I mean is - there is 1 mini SAS connector on the controller and they profide a fanout cable to connect one end to that 1 mini SAS connector and the other ends to 4 SATA drives. Is there a fanout cable that you can use to have 4 SAS connectors to 4 SAS drives instead of 4 connectors to 4 SATA drives?

The reason I'm asking is that even though it says there is a 6Gb/s throughput, I see other people complaining of the 3Gb/s with SATA drives so I was just gonna buy some SAS drives to be sure I'll get 6Gb/s for each drive.

Thanks.
Storage Expert

Yes, the cable I linked will connect 4 SAS drives. Each of the 4 connectors on the cable can speeds up to 6Gb/s.

SATA 3 (6Gb/s) speeds are from 301MB/s to 600MB/s.

Hard drives can be SATA 3 compatible, but not SATA 3 capable.
No hard drive can spin fast enough to saturate a SATA 2 (3Gb/s) port, let alone a 6Gb/s port.
So even if you buy a 15,000 rpm SAS drive you won't get SATA 3 speeds.
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