Building my own drive chassis

[Deslok]

I recently purchased a SAS HBA (over here in great deals) LSI Sas 9201-16e
And I'm loving it so far it's quick and flexible and I have a few external ports left after looping it back into my tower for the ones I need. I've been toying with using some of the old cases I have to build an external chassis for some extra storage and have found a few different options.
HP SAS expanders are cheap on amazon
Highpoint expanders cost more but have better options power wise
I've looked at different options for powering the HP expander including small motherboard or just trying to power it off a PCIe riser like this and a manual switch for the PSU.

Has anyone tried anything like this before? Should this be in the workstation forum instead?

 

[Evan]

Power off a PCIe riser works.
I have seen it documented elsewhere here in STH forum but here is some info.

PCI-E power board?

 

[Deslok]

Power off a PCIe riser works.
I have seen it documented elsewhere here in STH forum but here is some info.

PCI-E power board?

Are you talking about this board? iEi PE-2SD1-R10 PCI/PCIe from new launched IEIShop.com I hadn't been able to find it for retail the other day(out of stock a lot of places) although it looks like that's changed since, they're about 50... hmm...

 

[Evan]

Like that but I have seen cheaper, I was sure I found something on the site linked below but I can't find it now although similar to it.

P4SM2 (PCIe X4 to M.2 Adapter)

 

[Deslok]

Like that but I have seen cheaper, I was sure I found something on the site linked below but I can't find it now although similar to it.

P4SM2 (PCIe X4 to M.2 Adapter)

oh these!
it'll mean rigging a powerbutton but I could give one of those a try.

 

[Evan]

Just a thought, since those cards don't have a nice external power socket like some of the intel ones.

 

[i386]

If sas2 is enough you can look at the chenbro uek (universal expander kit) & chenbro expanders (lsi based).

Uek:

UEK with 2 chenbro expanders (installed on a matx mainboard sled):

 

[Deslok]

If sas2 is enough you can look at the chenbro uek (universal expander kit) & chenbro expanders (lsi based).

Uek:

UEK with 2 chenbro expanders (installed on a matx mainboard sled):

I'll give those a look, I don't mind SAS2 as long as larger than 2TB drives aren't an issue, SSD's live in the tower no reason to put them external(plus ssd's for bulk storage are expensive XD)

 

[PigLover]

SAS2 is fine with >2tb drives. It was some SAS1 platforms that couldnt handle the larger drives.

Sent from my VS996 using Tapatalk

 

[Deslok]

SAS2 is fine with >2tb drives. It was some SAS1 platforms that couldnt handle the larger drives.

Sent from my VS996 using Tapatalk

Yes but some seem to cut SATA drives from 6 to 3gbps any idea if that has any impact on capacity?

 

[raylangivens]

Yes but some seem to cut SATA drives from 6 to 3gbps any idea if that has any impact on capacity?

Usually it hasn't, max. capacity depends on the HBA / RAID-controller.

 

[K D]

Yes but some seem to cut SATA drives from 6 to 3gbps any idea if that has any impact on capacity?

Are all the drives SATA 6G? I'm trying to find it but I remember reading that some HBAs will use the link speed of the slowest connected drive.

 

[Deslok]

Are all the drives SATA 6G? I'm trying to find it but I remember reading that some HBAs will use the link speed of the slowest connected drive.

yes everything I have is sata 6 a this point, and so is the controller I was just worried about issued with the multipliers dropping to sata3(who cares performance wise for spinners) potentially causing issues with the capacities.