this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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If you were to suddenly come into possession of 12+ enterprise-grade SAS hard drives, how would you go about incorporating them into your homelab? (midwest.social)
submitted 9 months ago by archomrade@midwest.social to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Pretend your only other hardware is a repurposed HP Prodesk and your budget is bottom-barrel

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[–] IrishMASMS@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Looking past the folks recommending to sell them, it seems you have a handful of useful responses here (welcome to the internet & endless September). /snark Look past the naysayers, it will be fun and a learning experience just getting these drives up and running - a worthwhile experience IMHO.

I am down a similar path now, with a bunch of SAS drives. What I have learned/experienced so far:

  • Forget any USB docking stations or enclosures, they may advertise working for all SAS drives but are hit & miss expensive but cheaply made plastic crap.
  • There are a plethora of adapters available online that say you can convert SAS to SATA. Do not believe them - you need a SATA controller that also supports SAS. You may luck out and have a motherboard that has the right SATA chipset that supports SAS, you may not.

As others have mentioned in this thread, the easiest & optimal approach seems to be:

  • Get a low end workstation or server that supports SAS in the chipset and the drive bays
  • Get a low end workstation or server that supports SAS in the chipset and that you can add the drive bays you need
  • Get a low end workstation or server that you can install a controller card that supports SAS

I scored a free workstation from craigslist and one from freecycle, for another project on the workbench.

HTH, and good luck!

(Edited for formatting)

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 1 points 4 months ago

Yup, I ended up frankensteining a nas from various craigslist parts (i actually found a low-power business-class server motherboard that has worked out well for the purpose). Had to get a SAS HBA card and a couple SFF-8087 cables to do the job right, and I grabbed an old gaming case from the 2010's to hold it all, but it was relatively seamless. I had one of the drives go out already, but luckily I had it in a raid configuration with parity so it was just a matter of swapping out the drives and rebuilding.

It's been fun and rewarding, for sure! I'm glad I didn't sell them like these other dweebs told me to lol