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I would like to connect six HGST He10 SAS drives (model 0F27402) to a Lenovo M1215 HBA using direct cabling. I originally bought two SFF-8643 to 4*SATA breakout cables before seeing the drives as I naively thought the connector compatibility between SAS and SATA went in both directions (not so). After hours of research, I have reached the conclusion that I need SFF-8643 to 4*SFF-8680 cables (since everything is SAS 3.0) but I have read a handful of posts by people using the same HBA and SAS 3.0 drives with SFF-8643 to 4*SFF-8482 cables.

This has confused me considerably because the only SFF-8482 cables I can find say they are rated for SAS 2.0 (6Gb/s), although they do appear to be pin-compatible with the SFF-8680. In either case, suppliers of any of these cables appear to be very thin on the ground (particularly in the UK, where I am based) which makes me think I'm missing something important (or multiple things).

My question then is: how should I cable these drives to this HBA?

As a bonus, can anyone recommend learning resources that cover SAS 3.0 to help me answer questions like: what is the difference between SFF-8482 and SFF-8680? I have searched and searched but clear, up-to-date information seems maddeningly elusive.

Thanks in advance!

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    Do you perhaps mean SFF-8482 instead of SFF-8432? SFF-8482 is the same connector for SAS2 as SFF-8680 is for SAS3. That said, it may not work (reliably) with SFF-8482 or not at full speed (which won't matter with HDDs).
    – Zac67
    Aug 25, 2017 at 21:07
  • @Zac67 Thank you, yes! Edited accordingly
    – Dan Parsonson
    Aug 26, 2017 at 22:01
  • Use a server or a JBOD enclosure to hold the drives? Use something with an expander backplane to hold the drives? What are you doing?
    – ewwhite
    Aug 26, 2017 at 22:52
  • @ewwhite Alas all drives are going to be in a desktop PC case with no backplane of any kind present - hence the requirement for direct cabling between the HBA and the drives. With hindsight SAS wasn't the right choice for this project in some ways, although on the other hand I have learned a lot...
    – Dan Parsonson
    Aug 29, 2017 at 17:30

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From my comment: SFF-8482 and SFF-8680 are essentially the same connector (fitting to a drive's back), the former SAS2-compliant, the latter also SAS3-compliant. With HDDs, this won't matter in practice as they won't go faster than SAS1 speed anyway.

You can find all details to SFF standards on snia.org.

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  • Thank you - on further reflection that makes sense also from the point of view of backward compatibility. Thanks also for the SNIA link, very useful!
    – Dan Parsonson
    Aug 29, 2017 at 17:27

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