Can any SAS1 Expander work okay with drives over 2TB?

[Twice_Shy]

So someone else posted that SAS1 expanders wont work over 2tb, then a general search shows me someone who has one working: Question about the Supermicro BPN-SAS-846EL1 and SAS1 backplanes. • /r/DataHoarder

My original plans for 24-48 drives (or even more when you include opticals, hot spares, SSD scratch - though some may simply be put to on board SATA ports too) is still the case. Eventually no question i'm sure i'll need SAS2 for best performance. But after going back and forth several times on what i'm thinking, the money savings of starting with an SAS1 Expander is still there. I need more a big bucket of cheap bits than maximum performance to start. Later when I want to saturate 10gigE i'll probably be setting up RAID0 stripes and reconfiguring things then anyways - upgrading to SAS2 could come at the same point.

Does anyone have tested SAS1 Expanders which have worked with 3TB and up drives in a 24 port configuration? I'm wondering if it was SAS1 stuff I saw on ebay for like $50 for 24 ports - that's cheaper than I can even do SATA Port Multipliers for as an interim solution and I need the SAS card anyways.

Alternately i'm wondering if an SAS1 Expander can be put off one port (of a multiport SAS card) without interfering with whats on the other ports. I assume this is the case but better ask to be sure - if nothing else I could use that for the opticals and smaller drives (some spare 2tb's I have as well) to not take up SATA ports.

 

[i386]

There are different revisions of that backplane with sas1 expander chips. Depending on the firmware, the expander might support sas drives over 2tb (but not sata drives!).

 

[Twice_Shy]

Hmm, is it a for sure thing that nothing can support SATA over 2tb on SAS1 backplanes? Are all the anomalies for SAS drives only?

Assuming the prior are yes, what are the most affordable SAS2 backplanes that work well? Assuming I dont mind PCIe or even PCI card based ones that draw power from a motherboard either. (not a veto trait)

 

[ttabbal]

The issue seems to be a limitation in the most common SAS1 chips. Sometimes it works, but I don't trust my data to sometimes. I went with a TQ backplane to avoid the issue entirely. Sure, I need 3 SAS2 cards, and more cabling, but that was still cheaper than the expander backplane. And the server board has plenty of slots to work with, so it's fine. I could have done it with an expander and one card, but the price was about the same, I have the slots, and performance is better.