Hello,

Bought a spare super cheap used 3TB drive a year ago, and just figured out it’s not a SATA but a SAS drive.

How fucked am I? What can I do more than using it as a paperweight?

Cheers!

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
    24·
    2 months ago

    This is all assuming it’s a spinning disk and not an SSD, so ignore me if that’s the case:

    Given SAS drives are usually used in data centre storage array applications and 3TB disks have been kinda small for that use case for a fair while, there’s a fairly high chance it was in heavy use for a good number of years. I’d bet it’s probably well on its way to being a paperweight regardless of your connectivity situation.

    If you do get it hooked up, don’t store anything on it you wouldn’t be okay losing.

    • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      2 months ago

      Yep spinning rust.

      Wanted a scratch disk to aggregate all my sensitive information thats scattered and duplicated on smaller disks and thumb drives. Would probably keep it as an ultimate backup too (I got a real backup).

      My thinking was that usually those disks are swapped out after 5 years when failure rates starts to creep up, but there’s still is some life left, largely enough for some fun.

  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
    13·
    2 months ago

    You can get a SAS USB external enclosure but they’re in the $100 range, probably not worth it for 3TB.

    For internal use, you can get a used PCIe SAS Host Bus Adapter fairly cheap BUT you need to do some research. Before you buy one you should confirm that there is a driver for the OS that you are using and that it is supported on your processor/socket/chipset. These cards are server hardware - many of them are not supported by Windows and/or are not compatible with consumer motherboards & CPUs.

    • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
      10·
      2 months ago

      I don’t know where you live but I got the drive for 30€ including shipping, a new drive is over 100€…

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
        105·
        2 months ago

        And then two years down the line you lose all the data - the pictures, the savegames, the porn collection. Drives are the one thing that shouldn’t be bought used

        • randombullet@programming.dev
          111·
          2 months ago

          Not if you have a proper backup plan.

          I have about 200ish TB or about 24 drives and 3 of them failed all are used. I have a solid backup plan so no issues with failing drives. Saves me roughly 100-200 a drive.

          New drives have infant mortality as well. An inverse bell curve would be the distribution.

        • thawed_caveman@lemmy.world
          5·
          2 months ago

          Look, i’m buying two hard drives no matter what to anticipate a drive failure. In that case, if i’m anticipating a failure anyway, might as well buy them second-hand and, yes, save a ton of money.

          The key is to look for a CrystalDiskInfo screenshot in the ad, which is indicative of a serious seller and also lets you know the drive’s condition. If you buy from a professional, you may get a warranty.

        • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
          4·
          2 months ago

          I learned the hard way when the cheap PSU blew up and took with it the mobo, my drive and my backup drive. That was the year 2000 or 2001.

          Since then I do have a good backup strategy (with most important stuff on amazon glacier).

          So you learned the hard way losing your porn stash 😉 ?

          Jk, and the drive is not for important stuff.

          • Klear@lemmy.world
            31·
            2 months ago

            PSU you is the other part you don’t want to cheap out on… Guess you got two lessons in one there.

            • Maalus@lemmy.world
              3·
              2 months ago

              A lot of people learn this lesson sadly. It isn’t “sexy” to brag that you have a gold / platinum rated high quality PSU. People would rather add a “Ti” or a “10” to their graphics card and then lose it all when it goes. Same reason why I have an UPS for home PC - sure, overvoltage, undervoltage, electrical noise probably won’t harm the PC. But why risk it? Also having a battery to save your shit, or buy more electricity online when you run out on a prepaid meter is cool (speaking from experience, happened to me like 10 times already lol)

              • Chee_Koala@lemmy.world
                1·
                2 months ago

                I never heard about pre paid electric meters for homes. May I ask where you are located? Small UPS seems like the frickin perfect addon to that situation!

            • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
              2·
              2 months ago

              Yeah, for sure. To be totally fair I probably got even more lessons out of it as I upgraded my SOs Duron 650 to an Athlon (so new mobo) and that was what blew up the chep PSU I guess…

              Usually I now go 750-900w platinum just because it’s so nice when the fan doesn’t start before 400 watts (and it heats less ofc).

        • Vivendi@lemmy.zip
          31·
          2 months ago

          I salvaged an 18 year old WD hard disk from a pentium IV system.

          It works to this day in my retro gaming machine lol

        • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          bullshit. drives should be backed up if the data is important which makes refurb and used drives perfectly acceptable. raid and good backups exists for a reason and don’t leave you to rely on one single drive to live forever.

          if you’re buying large drives and not using a system with raid functionality, you’re setting yourself up for failure, new drive or not. no crying you were warned.

    • lemming741@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 months ago

      I’ve gotten 3 drives from serverpartdeals, an 18 and a pair of 22s. They were $220, about half price.

  • GeorgimusPrime@lemmy.world
    6·
    2 months ago

    I’ve seen SAS-SATA adapters for sale online. I got a 120GB used SAS, and it’s cheaper to buy another drive than to order the adapter.

  • Toes♀@ani.social
    5·
    2 months ago

    You can get a used sas controller for cheap in most cases. Or try your luck with the generic stuff on Amazon.

    • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      2 months ago

      The link in Sanctus post says its SAS to SATA but the other way around doesn’t work for cheap converters 😞

      • y0din@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 months ago

        sorry if I misunderstood, but wasn’t his drive sas, and he needed to go to sata connections? this does that.

        sas hdd => sata controller connetions

        the converter is not the culprit, the drive needs a sata logo on the label for it to work the other way, which is mentioned on the sales page.

        if the drive had that logo or not is not mentioned as far as I can see

        (edit, thought it was OP replying at first, so changed that, and added requirements for the adapter)

        • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          2 months ago

          That’s exactly what I’d like to find, but you cannot, it seems, connect a SAS disk to a SATA slot on the mobo, only the other way around, with this adapter.

          The comments also seems to say exactly that (you have to put 4 or 5 stars to comment, so that’s a useless measure, gotta read those translated comments).

          • y0din@lemmy.world
            3·
            2 months ago

            you can, if you read my edited post, as long as the SATA logo is present on the label of the sas drive

            as mentioned in the description of the product

            • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
              1·
              2 months ago

              Thank you!

              Mine is suspiciously looking like yours 😁 but Dell, and without the sticker…

              Is it just a Dell rebranded Seagate? I mean Dell doesn’t make drives right? And the serial takes me right to segate drives who are compatible s-ata.

              Guess I’ll gamble a couple of € to see 😁

              • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
                2·
                2 months ago

                Dell drives are rebranded Seagates, however the firmware is slightly modified so the bios recognizes it as a Dell branded drive. Openmanage will throw an error if you use a different drive (though aside from that everything will work fine)

                • Valmond@lemmy.worldOP
                  11·
                  2 months ago

                  I’ll get the converter, I’ll let you know how it pans out, and a huge thank you!!

  • stoy@lemmy.zip
    2·
    2 months ago

    What you do is to look on the local used hardware sites, search for server, fet a cheap one with SAS interfaces, and now you have the start of a homelab.