Lenovo SA120 rear SATA drives

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DonJon

Member
Apr 9, 2016
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Ha now its back again at $95. Stop buying them at that price and bet ya it will be back to $75. Funny.
 

Gnodu

Active Member
Oct 10, 2015
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@MountainDew - yes- but I only had one unused SATA to test with-- but it linked at 6 Gbps. I did not test beyond that-- was a little short on time. (Work keeping me busy right now!!)

Im beginning to think there may be more than one version of the SA120 (i.e. Hardware revision, etc), because while i was able to get 6, i have no doubt that the other poster was only able to get 3. (Now that i think about it- could be drive limitation in his test?? I used a spare (brand new/right out of the box) Samsung Pro 950 SATA when i checked. The SAS ones i have in there are 6GB as well, and appear to be operating fine/at full speed. (Don't have model w/me. They were the newegg special late last year.)

In any case- sorry for stirring up pricing changes by posting- was never my intent. I just thought others might be interested, as they were something i had trouble getting when i really wanted a pair.
 

MountainDew

Member
Oct 19, 2015
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@MountainDew - yes- but I only had one unused SATA to test with-- but it linked at 6 Gbps. I did not test beyond that-- was a little short on time. (Work keeping me busy right now!!)

Im beginning to think there may be more than one version of the SA120 (i.e. Hardware revision, etc), because while i was able to get 6, i have no doubt that the other poster was only able to get 3. (Now that i think about it- could be drive limitation in his test?? I used a spare (brand new/right out of the box) Samsung Pro 950 SATA when i checked. The SAS ones i have in there are 6GB as well, and appear to be operating fine/at full speed. (Don't have model w/me. They were the newegg special late last year.)

In any case- sorry for stirring up pricing changes by posting- was never my intent. I just thought others might be interested, as they were something i had trouble getting when i really wanted a pair.
I will not accept your apology; it's unnecessary. To think that you or OP were the cause is insane. I was glad to see the post since it pointed out that the deal was for TWO cages and not one. So I took the deal. Secondly, I was watching that sale for months and the price fluctuated from $75 to $125. Again, your apology, while appreciated, is unnecessary :)

I just bought a pair of 6Gb/s SSDs from SanDisk and I'm waiting on the drive trays. Once that's done, I can run tests if anyone is interested. I just need to know what tests to run since I've never done this before.
 

Gnodu

Active Member
Oct 10, 2015
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MountainDew- I hope you find them every bit as fast as they are supposed to be. My initial plan was to have a "built in" or all-in-one array with SSDs built in/connected.

Testing: others with more info can hopefully chime in!! Much depends on what OS you are using, I can only really speak to Windows; here are my favorites:
ATTO: Older, GUI based, and as long as you run as Admin, works like a charm. Just looked for a link- download here:
Disk Benchmark Software | ATTO

Roadkil: Perhaps I like this one because a long, long, long time ago i played Everquest, and one if my toons there was named "Roadkil Deadfrog" (his race was a frog... Good times!) but I digress. Actually, while the interface on my (dated, but it does all I need it to!) version looks a little more "plain" with the decimals showing on xfer speeds, it's what i normally use for confirming initial results. (Dont have link handy-sorry!)

Hope that helps!
 

DonJon

Member
Apr 9, 2016
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Actually for verifying, install Megaraid Storage Manager and select the drive in MSM, its properties will show 3Gbps. That will confirm what speeds the disks are negotiated. And then any kind of disk benchmark (ATTO or CrystalDisk) will show 3Gbps speeds max. When I had the cage with me I ran tests mine with Kingston V300, Samsung 940 Pro, Samsung 940 Evo with 9260-8i, 9280-8e, 9280-4i4e etc. I have only tried them with LSI cards. If you are seeing 6Gbps in MSM, then I think the one I had was an older model may be.
 

MountainDew

Member
Oct 19, 2015
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Actually for verifying, install Megaraid Storage Manager and select the drive in MSM, its properties will show 3Gbps. That will confirm what speeds the disks are negotiated. And then any kind of disk benchmark (ATTO or CrystalDisk) will show 3Gbps speeds max. When I had the cage with me I ran tests mine with Kingston V300, Samsung 940 Pro, Samsung 940 Evo with 9260-8i, 9280-8e, 9280-4i4e etc. I have only tried them with LSI cards. If you are seeing 6Gbps in MSM, then I think the one I had was an older model may be.
I did have MSM already and it's showing that, while the drives are capable of 6Gb/s, the negotiated speed is only 3. What's funny is that I can manage the speeds of my other non-ssd drives but not the SanDisk SSDs I just bought.

Here are the results from my z400s drives
Code:
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

   Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :   479.429 MB/s
  Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :   382.270 MB/s
  Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   166.452 MB/s [ 40637.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   122.043 MB/s [ 29795.7 IOPS]
         Sequential Read (T= 1) :   457.107 MB/s
        Sequential Write (T= 1) :   340.801 MB/s
   Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) :    17.447 MB/s [  4259.5 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) :    29.126 MB/s [  7110.8 IOPS]

  Test : 16384 MiB [G: 0.0% (0.2/475.9 GiB)] (x9)  [Interval=5 sec]
The drive specs for it are here. I configured them in a raid 0
 

DonJon

Member
Apr 9, 2016
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I did have MSM already and it's showing that, while the drives are capable of 6Gb/s, the negotiated speed is only 3. What's funny is that I can manage the speeds of my other non-ssd drives but not the SanDisk SSDs I just bought.

Here are the results from my z400s drives
Code:
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

   Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :   479.429 MB/s
  Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :   382.270 MB/s
  Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   166.452 MB/s [ 40637.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   122.043 MB/s [ 29795.7 IOPS]
         Sequential Read (T= 1) :   457.107 MB/s
        Sequential Write (T= 1) :   340.801 MB/s
   Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) :    17.447 MB/s [  4259.5 IOPS]
  Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) :    29.126 MB/s [  7110.8 IOPS]

  Test : 16384 MiB [G: 0.0% (0.2/475.9 GiB)] (x9)  [Interval=5 sec]
The drive specs for it are here. I configured them in a raid 0
I bet it will be the same (3Gbps) for any SSD you put on it. Are those results for a single drive or for the stripe? I'm thinking its the speed for the stripe? How many drives in the RAID?
 

MountainDew

Member
Oct 19, 2015
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Ok. that's what I thought. Whereas you should be seeing those numbers for a single drive when negotiated at 6Gbps. That's the problem with this cage and the reason why I should abandon it.
I would say I'm a light user; in the fact that I'll have 4-5 VMs and my media stored on the DAS so I doubt I'll max out the capabilities. However, I will be hitting the forums at Lenovo. It's crazy that they advertise up and down how everything/port is 6Gbps but the SSDs won't negotiate at those speeds.

I intended to use them for RAID caching but I've learned this is a feature I may have to buy with my RAID card (LSI; who apparently was bought out by someone recently). So that will be a fun call.
 

DonJon

Member
Apr 9, 2016
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LSI is Avago now and nothing else has changed except for the company name. You can get CacheCade 2.0 Pro (earlier non Pro or 1.0 versions does not support write caching) hardware keys for cheap for 9260-8i or 9280-4i4e (9280-8e does not use h/w key). Note some of the cards take software keys which you have to pay full price (unless someone here has got some ideas on how to obtain them for cheap). Check the compatible part number for the keys at Avago site before ordering, it was a bit of confusion for me at the beginning.

MegaRAID CacheCade Pro 2.0 Software
 

anomaly

Active Member
Jan 8, 2018
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Not trying to resurrect this, but I'm looking for two cages. Anyone knows who's got them for sale with an acceptable price?