Curious about these kinds of hdds and was wondering if anyone here has tried them. I believe you need a separate controller card which adds to the expense but it might be worth it.
SAS HDDs
- Thread starter perdomot
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BlueAcolyte
Platinum Member
- Nov 19, 2007
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- May 13, 2003
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You can get controller cards and adapters so you can run SAS or SATA.
The speed and scalibility makes them a no brainer if you have the choice and cash. SAS drives at the 10k speed are the same price/gb or less as the Vraptor, 15k is a little more.
I've seen some 73GB 15K cheetahs for under $200 at Pricewatch so its really making me curious. How much is a good controller card?
Modelworks
Lifer
- Feb 22, 2007
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One of the better controller card makers is LSI.
http://www.lsi.com/storage_hom...sisas3041er/index.html
Cost is a bit high to enter the world of SAS.
Mainly because it is targeted at servers and so they can just charge more, not because it actually cost more
http://www.lsi.com/storage_hom...sisas3041er/index.html
Cost is a bit high to enter the world of SAS.
Mainly because it is targeted at servers and so they can just charge more, not because it actually cost more
Thanks for the suggestion. I see SAS cards are definately more expensive than SATA ones. The added expense is likely what keeps most folks from using SAS. Hoping someone using them post some info on their experience.
frostedflakes
Diamond Member
- Mar 1, 2005
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The Promise TX2650 can be found for about $60 online. I've read it has compatibility problems, though, so check their compatible motherboard list before buying.
I have Dell SAS in my Precision workstation, and always thought SAS was just Dell's name for a RAID controller. It came with two standard SATA drives configured for RAID 1.
What's so great about SAS?
What's so great about SAS?
Dell does have a series of SAS named RAID controllers, in a Precision 690 for example there's an onboard SAS 5/iR. It's a low end controller (only capable of RAID 0 and 1) but it does work.
The biggest reason for the typical enthusiast to go SAS is to gain access to 15K RPM drives. I put a few Cheetah 15K.5's into a Precision 690 at work, they are definitely nice drives. For my home use though I'm thinking that a four drive SSD array will be my next upgrade.
Given the rapidly dropping prices of SSD I think enthusiasts should skip over SAS. At work I have access to literally hundreds of 15K SAS drives though so I'm "stuck" using them for the near future.
Viper GTS
Precision 690 and onboard SAS 5/iR are indeed what I have. It must be able to handle regular SATA drives too, then?
I ran the Dell SAS Manager windows utility and there's 2 options:
1. Enable write cache (default: disabled)
2. Write-throuh or write-back (default write-through)
What are your preferred settings?
I read somewhere that the SAS 5/iR has a battery backup so you can enable the write cache and not worry about data loss. Any truth to that?
I'm virtually certain the onboard SAS 5/iR does not have any cache, much less a battery backed cache. The PERC 5 is available with battery backed cache, people are probably confusing the two.
This supports my theory:
http://lists.us.dell.com/piper...7-November/033568.html
The SAS 5/iR will work fine with SATA drives, my workstation has 4 Raptors on the 5/iR & they work great.
Viper GTS
This supports my theory:
http://lists.us.dell.com/piper...7-November/033568.html
The SAS 5/iR will work fine with SATA drives, my workstation has 4 Raptors on the 5/iR & they work great.
Viper GTS
That is why I said SAS or SATA in my post, the Perc is a popular card to get from Dell OEM on ebay, it is set up this way. Dell also likes to call it SATAu.
[/quote]
I read somewhere that the SAS 5/iR has a battery backup so you can enable the write cache and not worry about data loss. Any truth to that?[/quote]
Pop the cover and look for a battery. As simple as that.
For SAS controller cards, anything from Adaptec or 3Ware is up on the top of my list. Promise cards are a joke since I've had more quirks with them than successes. Always invest in a battery for the card if you can. The Percs from Dell are nice but I didn't see any nice ones that offered 8 ports or higher for a reasonable price.
Modelworks
Lifer
- Feb 22, 2007
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You have to breakdown what SAS stands for.
Serially Attached SCSI.
One of the great things about SCSI was the ability to attach lots of drives to one cable.
So if I want to have 16 drives, I can connect them all to one connection on the pc.
Granted they can't all use the interface at the same time, but its still a very easy way to connect lots of drives. You can have 16 drives on a single pc with just one connection on the pc itself.
The same is true for SAS. Its SATA with the ability to put more devices off one port. With expanders the limit is 16K devices.
Lorne
Senior member
- Feb 5, 2001
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MW "Granted they can't all use the interface at the same time".
This is untrue, SCSI interfaces can access all devices on its chanes at once, Thats why they were so popular in the server market (True multitasking) where ATA/SATA is limited to single IO at a time.
But I am unsure how SATA drives react on SAS controller but I would assume they react as if they were SAS since the controller does the IO control.
This is untrue, SCSI interfaces can access all devices on its chanes at once, Thats why they were so popular in the server market (True multitasking) where ATA/SATA is limited to single IO at a time.
But I am unsure how SATA drives react on SAS controller but I would assume they react as if they were SAS since the controller does the IO control.
I'm using 2 15K (raid-0) Fujitsu SAS drives attached to an Adaptec controller (the 4804 I think. can't remember off the top of my head at work).. I love it. Can't really compare it from a subjective stand point to my old raptors since they run XP and the Fujitsu's host Vista 64 but they are damn fast. The clicking takes a little getting use to though.
I'll see if I can get some HDtach metrics here in the next day or two and post them up.
I'll see if I can get some HDtach metrics here in the next day or two and post them up.
Rubycon
Madame President
- Aug 10, 2005
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Spend as much as you can afford on the controller and (more importantly) its cache. I would not buy a controller without a user upgradeable cache module. The nice thing about SAS is you can run SAS AND SATA drives at the same time! On some backplanes you may be limited to SAS or SATA on the same bus (but not mixed). Speed is greatly augmented over conventional SATA on the motherboard. There is no comparison. It's like comparing onboard VGA to a high end PCI-E card and that is no exaggeration. Unfortunately this venture is not cheap. Then again the pursuit of performance rarely is.
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