21 votes
Accepted

Faulty SATA disk but with a periodic error?

That's almost exactly 4000 seconds, within the accuracy of a cheap oscillator. This means that probably, something in the SATA drive or SATA controller firmware does this automatically. The reason for ...
Marcus Müller's user avatar
19 votes
Accepted

SAS / SATA max number of connected disks vs performance

SATA/SAS are not like hubs, rather they work much like a network switch. This means that a single SATA/SAS port provides the entire advertised bandwidth, independently from the other ports. In other ...
shodanshok's user avatar
  • 50.5k
19 votes
Accepted

What kind of SATA connector is this?

Taken from there SFF-8087 Internal four channel connector (data only) The SFF-8087 connector is a very widely used connector type that is commonly used today on SAS cards. It carries the ...
Sergey Nudnov's user avatar
14 votes
Accepted

What is a SSATA port?

It's what happens when you let marketing people touch technical documentation. This particular server motherboard has a secondary SATA controller, to which the ports labeled SSATA1-4 are connected. ...
Michael Hampton's user avatar
13 votes
Accepted

S-SATA Vs I-SATA (PCH, SCU)

SCU means Storage Control Unit SCUs support SAS drives with HDD enable module installed SCUs do not support Optical Drives There is no practical performance advantage when using SCU Intel PCH ...
Overmind's user avatar
  • 3,141
11 votes
Accepted

Can we upgrade Dell's basic Server R240 (which still uses HDD 7200RPM) to an SSD?

On Dell's R210, R220 and T130 I've successfully used Sandisk's consumer grade SSDs for years. I've done this with PERC's H410 and H710 controllers. It will be a matter of controller and controller's ...
Marco's user avatar
  • 1,709
9 votes

Is it possible to replace the SATA CD-ROM to SATA SSD on HP DL360p Gen8?

The short answer is that you can't really do what you're thinking. Instead of the normal RAID controller -> backplane connections, the kit you've described does this: HP supports a "chipset SATA" ...
ewwhite's user avatar
  • 198k
9 votes

Smart Array P410i with SATA SSD drives unstable

You're not supposed to do this. The HP Smart Array P410i RAID controller is not compatible with every SSD. You can't just toss some consumer drives into the server and expect them to work. HP ...
ewwhite's user avatar
  • 198k
9 votes

Can we upgrade Dell's basic Server R240 (which still uses HDD 7200RPM) to an SSD?

Yes, you can swap HDDs <-> SSDs the way you want. Moreover, it's OK to use non-Dell branded SSDs inside Dell servers, you won't receive support (of course!) and some functions won't work like LEDs, ...
BaronSamedi1958's user avatar
8 votes
Accepted

3Gbps SSDs in RAID1 VS 6Gbps SAS Drives in RAID1 - Performance Difference?

In most scenarios, including common virtualization workloads, the SSDs will outperform the HDD drives due to lower latency and higher IOPS. The link speed is a lot less relevant than latency or IOPS ...
Bernhard's user avatar
  • 981
8 votes

Difference between hard drives

Yes, that is correct. There are multiple reasons for this: SAS drives are sold less, leading to scale effects. They are actually more reliable These 1.2 GB 2.5" are 10k RPM drives, so they are ...
Sven's user avatar
  • 99.5k
7 votes

Performance Difference SAS vs. SATA?

This is a late answer, but I would like to add my opinion. From a pure speed standpoint, a nearline drive (as the ones OP considered) will performs practically the same both using the SATA interface ...
shodanshok's user avatar
  • 50.5k
7 votes
Accepted

Is it possible to convert 4-pin floppy to SATA power?

Yes, it is legit. All of these adapters use +5V or +12V pins with some earthing. The adapter what you want to buy does only the physical conversion, because no electrical conversion is needed. You ...
peterh's user avatar
  • 4,971
7 votes

Server Hot Swap Hard Drives

You absolutely can do such a "rolling" update, but it's going to ... a) ... take lots of time! b) ... provide really bad performance as your array will stay in "degraded" state during the whole ...
BaronSamedi1958's user avatar
6 votes

HP ProLiant DL180 Gen9 modding/cabling

What's the real goal here? If you're just trying to get a pair of disks separate from the main drive array, why not use a PCIe SSD? Otherwise, you're butchering perfectly good and serviceable ...
ewwhite's user avatar
  • 198k
6 votes

Finding SMART status of SATA disks in HP SmartArray

You can do smartctl -a -l ssd /dev/sda -d cciss,1 or smartctl -a -l ssd /dev/sda -d sat+cciss,1 you can count the last number then up to select the new HDD. this will result in: root@pve:~# smartctl ...
Robin's user avatar
  • 61
5 votes
Accepted

Can't mount SATA drives when moved from USB enclosure to internal

This sounds like the problem described at https://superuser.com/questions/679725/how-to-correct-512-byte-sector-mbr-on-a-4096-byte-sector-disk: the USB enclosures reported a different sector size than ...
oliver's user avatar
  • 405
5 votes

hard resetting link exception Emask 0x50 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x4090800 action 0xe frozen

What you server experiences is basically a SATA renegotiation at a lower link speed after some problem communicating with the drives. These factors can be at work here (ordered by probability) very ...
shodanshok's user avatar
  • 50.5k
5 votes
Accepted

Why is one drive running at 3.0gb/s?

Most probably ATA (DATA) cable is damaged and maximum throughput of it is 3 GB/s. Try to change the cable or if it's a hot swap use the different slot. Moreover, it is doesn't make any differences in ...
Stuka's user avatar
  • 5,775
5 votes

Finding SMART status of SATA disks in HP SmartArray

You don't have to use smartctl with HP servers. HP has purpose built tools for these, so the ssacli and ssaducli utilities would be the most helpful. https://downloads.linux.hpe.com/SDR/project/mcp/ ...
ewwhite's user avatar
  • 198k
5 votes
Accepted

Is it possible to check drives SMART attributes from a USB/eSATA enclosure?

You can obtain SMART attributes if the USB adapter/enclosure supports UASP, USB Attached SCSI Protocol. Older enclosures may not support this protocol and may only have proprietary interfaces to SMART,...
Michael Hampton's user avatar
5 votes

How to use 12 HDDs with the Supermicro BPN-SAS3-826EL1 backplane?

If you have the -EL1 backplane, you should be able to see all 12 drives, even with a single cable from the RAID card to the expander backplane. If you don't, something's wrong with the backplane or ...
Arvind Sankar's user avatar
5 votes

Data corruption when disk write caching is enabled

Modern file systems (XFS, ZFS, JFS, ext4, APFS, NTFS, etc) all use journaling so yes, you’re going to lose some data (latest commits and what’s not committed yet and stored in cache, that’s obvious), ...
BaronSamedi1958's user avatar
4 votes

Use of 2.5" Laptop Drives in a Server?

Apparently everyone saying to use enterprise drives...just because...are mistaken. There are several articles from companies that have actually done this vs just making stuff up. In short: ...
user342213's user avatar
4 votes

Anyone seen a meaningful SAS vs SATA comparison/benchmark?

So much misinformation here! I can't imagine a meaningful benchmark between SAS and SATA and I wouldn't bother looking for one. This is like benchmarking a six passenger minivan versus high-speed ...
KD Mann's user avatar
  • 41
4 votes

ZFS best practices with hardware RAID

Everybody tells that ZFS on top of RAID is a bad idea without even providing a link. But the developers of ZFS - Sun Microsystems even recommend to run ZFS on top of HW RAID as well as on ZFS mirrored ...
Alek_A's user avatar
  • 337
4 votes

Can I move a single disk from one esxi to another esxi server?

Maybe this information will be useful to someone: I had to do the same as SkinnyGeek1010, but with ESXi installed on the SATA disk and rescan on Web Interface didn't worked (HD was reconized but not ...
J.L's user avatar
  • 41
4 votes
Accepted

hard resetting link exception Emask 0x50 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x4090800 action 0xe frozen

According to Supermicro Support, the defect lies with board : Quote: This board may need ECO 16238 update.
Dennis Nolte's user avatar
  • 2,911
4 votes

Recover ATA SSD After Secure Erase Without Setting Password

Strange, I've done this several times without such outcome. hdparm --security-help hdparm --security-set-pass NULL /dev/my_ssd hdparm --security-erase NULL /dev/my_ssd Usually they drop their data ...
Dmitry Ilyin's user avatar
4 votes

Are there any advantages to connecting SATA3 drives to SAS ports?

There's no point really. If you want to get SAS functionality there's a compromise in a way of NL-SAS: SATA drives with SAS interface.
BaronSamedi1958's user avatar

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