Thanks for pointing that out.
Is 4 SATA's per breakout cable the practical limit, or do some breakout cables accomodate up to 8 SATA drives per SAS connection? I tried looking on NewEgg, and 4 seemed to be the maximum, assuming I was searching correctly.
There are only 4 Phy's on a SFF8087 port... to run more than 4 drives require an expander to multiplex for you.Thanks for pointing that out.
Not seen anything in this form factor with a SAS backplane, think you generally have to get rackmounts to get those. For what it's worth, the cabling on this SATA one is pretty easy and it's an "active" backplane (i.e. you still get drive activity lights) even if it doesn't support SGPIO (at least I didn't see an obvious connector). The 8087 cables that came with my case are thin and silver and look vastly easier to wrangle than the red ones in that pic.
If it turns out that it is a SAS backplane, then assuming you had a SAS controller (either on the motherboard or, as pictured, on a card), then would you then need only one SAS cable to connect to it (from SAS controller to SAS backplane)? i.e. one cable instead of eight? i.e. it would just extend the SAS to the backplane, either as a kind of bus extension or as a SAS-to-SAS connector? That's all I meant by my original comment, but not having actually done it, perhaps it's more complicated than that.
I would be skeptical if it's a full on SAS SFF-8087 to 8087 backplane, especially if they also claim it to be SATA. While yes you can run SATA drives on SAS controllers with a true SAS expander backplane, you can't do the opposite, that is if you have only SATA ports (from motherboard etc) and the backplane is SFF-8087, you're completely hosed unless you get an HBA/RAID Card.
Shell Shocker Deal. Exclusive Jaw Dropping Savings on PC Components and Electronics - Newegg.com
You sir are trying to put me on the path to divorce! Trying to figure out what to tell wife...
I suppose the advantage of the U-NAS passthrough, though, is that there's just less in the path between the motherboard and the drive that might be poorly implemented. I mean, with the Mobius, what benchmark would you need to run to convince yourself that throughput or latency hasn't been compromised because of intervening layers? On the other hand, that approach does tend to pre-judge it, and the review evidence seems mostly very positive. I'd be more concerned with the reviews were fewer in number and/or less positive.Regarding the OP and the desire for silence/quiet. Maybe put your MB in a fanless case but connect to one of these using eSata or USB3.0? It can allegedly be configured as JBOD:
Amazon.com: Mobius™ 5-Bay FireWire 800, eSATA, USB 3.0 RAID Hard Drive Enclosure: Computers & Accessories
i.e. maybe separating MB heat from HDD heat would mean less heat per case, and so fewer CFM's per case and therefore (theoretically) quieter than putting it all in one box? Anyone here tried it, or something similar? Also, that configuration would utilize two smaller psu's (one is included in the Mobius), and so again, possibly a quieter configuration?
It seems to be gathering praise on amazon, including praise for being quiet. Seems like its trayless nature would be very handy for juggling backup drives....
P.S. Nice catch on the shell shocker! Is it as "silent" as some of the other Fractal Designs cases purport to be?
Is it reasonable to suppose the SATA passthroughs will passthrough SATA III, or might they pass-through only SATA II (3Gbps or less instead of 6Gbps)?
It's a good question and I'm afraid there isn't an easy answer. As I said earlier there is no spec that I could find saying what speeds it has been designed for / tested at. It reminds me of another thread from around here recently asking about SATA cables and what to look for in high-quality ones - for both cables and these passive backplanes there isn't really any specific thing to look for. From the close-up pictures of the backplane that I was able to find on google all of the traces connecting the cables to the drives are nice and short and reasonably far away from the traces delivering power so I would guess they would probably have no problems running at 6G speed (SATA III / SAS II), and would quite possibly still be fine at 12G (SAS III) - but of course no guarantees. At least with SAS-expander backplanes its fair to expect that the entire backplane has been tested at speeds at least as high as the expander chip is rated for.
