SAS/SATA multilane cable to host/from host?

[jackwhitter]

i have an sas controller with x4 multilane connector on one end and i picked up what i thought was a fanout connector and all the connections fit, however, after looking at the cable manual, this cable is supposed to be used with the multilane connector on a drive cage and then the fanout goes to the card! i can not get the card to read any drives, so i am assuming this makes a difference, but i can find no documentation stating one way or the other!! any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[RebateMonger]

I'm taking a hard look at SAS/SATA right now myself. Maybe these will help, but I don't see much about the 4-channel Infiniband connector:

SAS Tutorial by HP

Wikipedia: SATA

Wikipedia: Serial Attached SCSI

 

[jackwhitter]

oh, i have not seen that first one yet. pretty thorough overview and mentions the external multilane connectors (infiniband), but nothing on the pin outs. thanks though!

 

[jackwhitter]

i've gotten some replies on 2cpu forums and they are saying i need sata ii drives for the controller to 'see' my hard drives. can anyone confirm this? i've read an article saying the sas group and sata ii group were the ones who got together and made things compatible, so this could make sense. thanks!