SAS+SATA compatibility?

[Demon-Xanth]

After reading numerous places, there seems to be atleast some level of compatibility between SAS and SATA. Does anyone have any firm info?

ie:
SAS drives don't work with SATA controllers but SATA drives work with SAS controller.

What I have found:
SAS connectors are electrically the same as SATA
SAS drives cannot plug into SATA backplanes
SATA drives appear to be able to plug into SAS backplanes
SAS has a "translation" protocol to talk to SATA devices.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
After reading numerous places, there seems to be atleast some level of compatibility between SAS and SATA. Does anyone have any firm info?

ie:
SAS drives don't work with SATA controllers but SATA drives work with SAS controller.

What I have found:
SAS connectors are electrically the same as SATA
SAS drives cannot plug into SATA backplanes
SATA drives appear to be able to plug into SAS backplanes
SAS has a "translation" protocol to talk to SATA devices.

That is correct AFAIK. Regular SATA controllers don't know how to talk to SAS drives, but SAS controllers generally can work with both SAS and regular SATA drives.