I bought a 15.36TB SSD SAMSUNG PM1633A SAS MZ-ILS15TA DELL EMC MZ1LS15THMLS-000D4
I am trying to figure out what to buy in order to connect it to my desktop PC via PCIE. Is this a viable or recommended solution?
SFF-8643 to SFF-8639 cable
Dell LSI 9311-8i 8-port Internal 12G SAS PCle x8 Host Bus RAID Adapter 3YDX4
To summarize a few details, the PM1633A is a SAS3 (aka SAS 12 Gbps) SSD drive, which accepts an SFF-8482 plug. This SFF-8482 plug is the one named in the SAS3 standard for use on drives. You mention the LSI 9311 HBA, which does support SAS3 and has a pair of SFF-8643 receptacles, which is specified in the SAS3 standard for use on backplane aggregators. That is to say, when multiple drives are bundled up onto a single cable.
When used for SAS3, SFF-8643 supports up to four drives. And so you will find forward-breakout cables online that go from SFF-8643 to 4x SFF-8482.
The cable you mentioned – an SFF-8643 to SFF-8639 – is meant for U.2 drives. Because of the 4x PCIe lanes used for U.2, a single drive uses all the pins in an SFF-8643 plug, which is why this cable can only attach to a single drive. Because SFF-8639 is backwards compatible with SFF-8482, this could still be used for SAS3 drives, but it would waste the other three “lanes” in the cable.
With all that said, I would not recommend the cable you listed, and instead replace it with the aforementioned forward-breakout to 4x SFF-8482. This way, you can later buy three more SAS3 drives. I presume you’re not planning to ever use U.2 here.
Also, regarding the choice of HBA, was there a reason you chose the 9311? I have both the venerable 9300-8i and a newer 9305-16i. Both work great for me and support SAS3. It’s notable that power and heat is lower on the 9305. The 9300, 9305, and 9311 all have the same pair of SFF-8643 connectors.
An aside: one-to-many breakout cables have a forward and backward variety, and care must be taken to avoid buying the wrong one. This link explains the difference, which is still applicable to SAS3: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/6723-sas-to-sata-cables-forward-or-reverse-which-where-why/
Note that some combinations of backwards breakout cables simply don’t exist, so there might be only one version available for sale. Still, read the product descriptions carefully for which end is meant for the HBA and which end goes to drives or the backplane.
Thank you for the much needed help. I have been clueless and trying to find a decent inexpensive solution.
QA: Q “was there a reason you chose the 9311?” A: no, only that it looked nice.
The 9300-8i is 1/4 the price so I will go with it.
I took a gamble on a cheap used drive purchase at $500 for local game installs. The drive arrives in 2 days. I couldn’t find out what connection type the drive had or power delivery needs
Here are the products I have selected based on your recommendation. Do these look like good choices?
The first link is an SFF-8087 to 4x SFF-8482. While this cable could technically support SAS3 speeds, the SFF-8087 connector was specified for SAS2, not SAS3. As a result, you won’t really find any HBAs that have an SFF-8087 connector and do SAS3 over it. This cable is incompatible with the 9300-8i from your second link. I would choose something more like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GPD5KFK . Also be advised that if your SSD isn’t recognized with this cable, the reviews mention that the 3.3v power pin – if you have one at all – might need to be disabled, to avoid PWDIS issues.
For the second link, that Inspur 9300-8i appears identical to the HBA I have, and it’s worked fine for me, although I only have SAS2 drives hooked up to it right now. The nice thing is that the listing advertises “IT mode”, which was important to me, because burning firmware to switch to IT mode is a sad experience.
EDIT: BTW, when you receive this drive, you should probably dump the SMART data to see how much lifetime is left on this SSD. This is an enterprise SSD, so it’s possible that it came from several years of use as a caching drive in a server somewhere. That could do a number to its remaining lifetime, but I would imagine its performance would fit well for your use-case.
Thank you! I just ordered both https://www.ebay.com/itm/195918369621 and https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GPD5KFK
The SAS 15 Pin Power Port on the cables gets their power from the LSI card?
The ebay seller showed hdd data and I think? it is excellent. Almost new? https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/wV0AAOSwClZkMcGx/s-l9999.jpg
The end of the cable attaching to each drive needs to receive a SATA power cable, just like a standard SATA drive would need.
Perfect, I have loads of those available
BTW OP: when you get this set up, please run some benchmarks and tell this community how it performs. I’ve had a free PM1633A sitting on my desk for 1.5 years, just because I haven’t gotten around to it. I’m keen to know how it behaves.
Sure, I would love too. Do you know what software to run in Windows to provide good results? I can temporarily attach it to my linux machine if necessary
I’m afraid I don’t have much experience with benchmarking in Windows. I think I’ve seen CrystalDiskMark mentioned in a few places, and it’s FOSS under MIT License.
Cool, I will give it a try. I may install it to my linux machine and access over samba. I need to test if game installs will work over network like this first
