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!

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
    24·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      2 months ago

      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.

    • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
      10·
      2 months ago

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

    • lemming741@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 months ago

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

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
    13·
    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.

  • Toes♀@ani.social
    5·
    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.

  • GeorgimusPrime@lemmy.world
    61·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • Anivia@feddit.orgDeutsch
      1·
      2 months ago

      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

    • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      2 months ago

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

      • y0din@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 months ago

        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)

        • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          2 months ago

          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).

          • y0din@lemmy.world
            3·
            2 months ago

            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

            • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
              1·
              2 months ago

              Thank you!

              Mine is suspiciously looking like yours 😁 but Dell, and without the sticker…

              Is it just a Dell rebranded Seagate? I mean Dell doesn’t make drives right? And the serial takes me right to segate drives who are compatible s-ata.

              Guess I’ll gamble a couple of € to see 😁

              • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
                2·
                2 months ago

                Dell drives are rebranded Seagates, however the firmware is slightly modified so the bios recognizes it as a Dell branded drive. Openmanage will throw an error if you use a different drive (though aside from that everything will work fine)

                • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
                  11·
                  2 months ago

                  I’ll get the converter, I’ll let you know how it pans out, and a huge thank you!!

  • stoy@lemmy.zip
    2·
    2 months ago

    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.