SAS Help..

[coxmaster]

A friend of mine wants to upgrade his motherboard to a P6T Deluxe. One nice feature is the built in SAS. Another friend works in a computer shop where they throw away 15,000 RPM SCSI drives on a daily basis. My questions are this: 1- Is speed going to be better if i have 2 15k SCSI drives running in Raid0? 2- What type of SCSI drive do i need? I know there are tons of pin arrangements, what size do i need. 3- How do i begin setting this all up?

Basically anything about SAS will be helpful

Thanks

 

[Rubycon]

That board has issues with the onboard SAS host. It will get fixed (hopefully) with later embedded BIOSes. You may want to stick with desktop SATA for now. (or use a proper intelligent SAS host)

 

[coxmaster]

Ok thanks for the tip.. Got answers to any of my other questions?

 

[Rubycon]

15K drives come in three variants - U320SCSI (both SCA80 for hotswap and 68pin), SAS, and FCAL (Fibre Channel). SAS will connect directly to your motherboard. Two in RAID0 may help or not depending on your use/requirements, etc. It can also increase the risk of data loss. Size depends on (again) your use and operating system you choose.

 

[coxmaster]

OK, thanks. The ones i would get are U320SCSI from old servers and stuff. Possible to connect to the on-board SAS on this (or any) motherboard?

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: coxmaster
OK, thanks. The ones i would get are U320SCSI from old servers and stuff. Possible to connect to the on-board SAS on this (or any) motherboard?

No way to connect U320 drives to a SAS host. If they are in a server they are most likely SCA80 U320 drives and will require either a SCA backplane OR SCA to 68 pin adapters AND a U320 host to connect to.