EU HGST 4U SAS3 12GB/s Storage Enclosure 60 bays £299

[CyberSkulls]

You might want to try contacting hgst technician in your country as well, they were quite responsive in my case, i submitted a ticket in their site about shutdown possibility and they called me explaining everything in details. You will need to register your chassis S/N in their website first.

I actually wrote them right away when I saw the issue and they responded with they do not support WD drives in their chassis. They then referred me to their qualified drive list and suggested I replace those (16) 8TB Reds with a drive off that list. In other words, zero help which is what I expected. I wasn't asking them to buy my drives from me, I was just curious if this was expected or possible behavior with a non HGST and non SAS drive.


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[sthsep]

I also got no problems with 8TB WD Reds. They work fine in Jbod

 

[CyberSkulls]

Just FYI to anyone thinking about upgrading the firmware, don't do it!!

I fired up my backup server this morning to find out none of my 2TB Hitachi disks work in the chassis anymore. Can't remember the model number off the top of my head but they are the ones a lot of us on this forum buys when Newegg has them for $29.99. It wouldn't shock me if this is also the case for the 3TB Hitachis we all buy when they are like $60 from Newegg.

Their power/activity LED's are just a solid red. Read through some of the documentation and it appears they tried to lock those chassis down ever further to force you into the newer HGST drives.

My WD 2TB Reds and 2TB Blues still work properly as well as my 2TB WD RE4's. So I had to fire up a trusty SM 846 and load my Hitachis back into that and as suspected they fired right up.


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[Gene]

Can't you just downgrade firmware back?

 

[CyberSkulls]

Can't you just downgrade firmware back?

Possibly. They have changed the firmware update process along the way so not sure how easy it would be to go back two revisions. So I found it easier just to pop them into my 846 chassis since they weren't being used anyway.

This has actually got me thinking about going with all large drives and substantially smaller chassis anyway.


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[denywinarto]

Anybody tried 10tb helium hdd?
Hgst has these helium based hdd
Just wondering if there's any potential hardware limitation for helium hdd..

 

[CyberSkulls]

I wouldn't think there would be an issue as the 8TB, even the 8TB Reds are helium.

Also saw HGST has listed a V2 of this chassis with updated SAS components.


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[CyberSkulls]

Can any of you running SAS2 controllers comment back on which ones your using? From my previous comments you can see my specific card (LSI SAS9201-16e) doesn't play well with 8TB Reds or the 8TB white label drives in the external my books.

From seeing other comment saying they are running upwards of (30) of the 8TB Reds, I know the chassis will handle them fine it's just my controller doesn't like them. I've looked at switching over to SAS3 9300 series cards for better support on these drives like others have but I honestly don't want to have to buy two new controller cards since the pricing is so high not to mention all new $100+ cables again. I would prefer to just buy a different SAS2 controller that happens to work with these drives.

I've also experienced the UDMA errors on my 4TB Reds and 4TB Blues although not as bad on this controller but it plays perfectly well with pretty much all of my 2TB drives. So even if your not running 8TB Reds, but even 4TB Reds/Blues, I would be interested to know what controller your using. Buying a different SAS2 controller could save me upwards of $800 by the time I add in the new SAS3 cable costs. And since I use my chassis for media storage, I honestly don't need the speed.

Appreciate any replies on this


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[denywinarto]

Can any of you running SAS2 controllers comment back on which ones your using? From my previous comments you can see my specific card (LSI SAS9201-16e) doesn't play well with 8TB Reds or the 8TB white label drives in the external my books.

From seeing other comment saying they are running upwards of (30) of the 8TB Reds, I know the chassis will handle them fine it's just my controller doesn't like them. I've looked at switching over to SAS3 9300 series cards for better support on these drives like others have but I honestly don't want to have to buy two new controller cards since the pricing is so high not to mention all new $100+ cables again. I would prefer to just buy a different SAS2 controller that happens to work with these drives.

I've also experienced the UDMA errors on my 4TB Reds and 4TB Blues although not as bad on this controller but it plays perfectly well with pretty much all of my 2TB drives. So even if your not running 8TB Reds, but even 4TB Reds/Blues, I would be interested to know what controller your using. Buying a different SAS2 controller could save me upwards of $800 by the time I add in the new SAS3 cable costs. And since I use my chassis for media storage, I honestly don't need the speed.

Appreciate any replies on this


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11 drives, mix of 8and 6 tb reds, Dell SC8000, supposed to be lower specs than yours though..

 

[CyberSkulls]

11 drives, mix of 8and 6 tb reds, Dell SC8000, supposed to be lower specs than yours though..

If your running a SAS2 controller in it, which one are you using? That's my issue right now is finding a controller known to work with these drives. I know a ton of peeps out there are running SAS2 controllers so hoping someone reading this can confirm their "controller X" works perfectly fine. I don't mind picking up a used SAS2 controller on eBay but I'll probably sell my 4U60's before I put $1,000 into new cables and controllers. They just won't make financial sense to keep just for the data storage I use them for. I could honestly throw together a 12 bay chassis using 8TB drives and SATA port multipliers and not notice any difference in speed for my specific use case.


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[nephri]

Hi,
I haven't tested yet this chassis but i bought
- 1x LSI SAS 9300-8e 12gbit/s Dell J91FN for 59€ on ebay (shipping and vat included)
- 2x QSFP to Mini-SAS HD cables for 58€/each on sftpcables (shipping and vat included)

The cables were bought from 10Gtek 4x Mini-SAS HD (SFF-8644) to QSFP Cable, 1-Meter(3.3ft) . For now they are out of stock but the price was pretty good.

I flashed the Dell controller with the LSI firmware.
But i didn't test yet the whole because i hadn't yet disks to put in it.

But just for saying that you can test another hardware without spending another 400 $ bills

 

[Rahvin9999]

Can any of you running SAS2 controllers comment back on which ones your using? From my previous comments you can see my specific card (LSI SAS9201-16e) doesn't play well with 8TB Reds or the 8TB white label drives in the external my books.

I have 30 8TB reds on it now with a 9300 controller. Before that it was on a 9207-8i controller and before that i ran it for a little while with a dell H200 controller which was crossflashed to LSI firmware.
They all ran fine for me. Usually my IO load is pretty low. It is all JBOD and for Archiving. But running a 24 disk badblocks burn in test on the H200 didnt give me any issues.
Only problems I have had were with a bad cable. which I used to convert the SFF-8087 connections to SFF 8088 on the 9207-8i. Once I replaced it the errors went away and everything ran fine.

Question from me. You indicate needing to buy 2 controllers. If you run SATA disks you can skip the second one. It will gain you nothing since the SATA drives are single ported. You can test it. Just connect one HBA to the enclosure. and switch from one to the other connection.
On one you will see drives on the other nothing.

 

[CyberSkulls]

I have 30 8TB reds on it now with a 9300 controller. Before that it was on a 9207-8i controller and before that i ran it for a little while with a dell H200 controller which was crossflashed to LSI firmware.
They all ran fine for me. Usually my IO load is pretty low. It is all JBOD and for Archiving. But running a 24 disk badblocks burn in test on the H200 didnt give me any issues.
Only problems I have had were with a bad cable. which I used to convert the SFF-8087 connections to SFF 8088 on the 9207-8i. Once I replaced it the errors went away and everything ran fine.

Question from me. You indicate needing to buy 2 controllers. If you run SATA disks you can skip the second one. It will gain you nothing since the SATA drives are single ported. You can test it. Just connect one HBA to the enclosure. and switch from one to the other connection.
On one you will see drives on the other nothing.

I meant I have multiple chassis running on unRAID so I run multiple hosts. And like you said, single ported so that second host is connected to a second chassis. So I would need two controllers as well as multiple cables.

Since I only use these for media storage I'll most likely sell these big chassis and downsize to 12 bay chassis with SATA port multipliers. Much cheaper and a lot less headache for me. I was just trying to reduce my drive count by going from 2TB to 8TB drives and it's been nothing short of a headache I really don't care to have. By the time I could fill these two chassis with 8TB drives, we will be on SAS4 chassis and 20TB hard drives. So I'm thinking I'd be better off to cut my losses and hope I can sell these on Craigslist locally.


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[Gene]

Sata port multipliers never worked right for me especially on other OSs other than windows. Stick ith SAS

 

[CyberSkulls]

Sata port multipliers never worked right for me especially on other OSs other than windows. Stick ith SAS

Oh I agree. I was just pissed when I wrote that. I was just getting tired of screwing around with this stuff. I like to tinker but when trying to reduce my spindle count results in so many issues.. needless to say I was frustrated.

I did more testing over the last few days and have these conclusions after trying different connections based on a Reddit users suggestion.

Connecting the 4TB & 8TB drives via SATA to 8087 breakout cable and from there to a 8087 to 8088 conversion and finally connecting that with a 8088 to 8088 cable to the back of the LSI SAS9201-16e resulted in no errors and full speed data transfer. That was the long way spaghetti cable way of doing the test but it's what I had on hand.

We know we have users with 30+ 8TB Reds in their chassis, so I know the chassis including the SAS3 backplanes and dual SAS3 expanders run properly with these drives. With the above test I now know the LSI SAS9201-16e handles the drives properly when directly connected.

So my issue appears to be the LSI SAS9201-16e just doesn't like a mixture of the QSFP to 8088 cables combined with the 4/8TB drives firmware. Something isn't communicating correctly. The chassis + cables + SAS card communicate properly using my 2TB drives of varying brands/models so I know the individual components are good. I even went as far as putting the 4TB/8TB drives in a different chassis with 8087 to 8088 cable and again, full speed error free operation with the LSI SAS9201-16e.

I also have zero issues reading/writing at full speeds without errors using my older Supermicro SAS2LP card with these chassis and my QSFP to 8088 cable. So that again tells me my chassis + cables are working properly.

I could understand if the cable flat out refused to see the drives, but since it does see them, writes to the drives at full speeds, and does so error free and then falls on its ass during reads is mind boggling to say the least.

This is by far the weirdest issue I have come across in quite some time. I'm only posting my finding as someone else may have a similar issue with a different chassis or cable and find the above testing helpful.

So for now these chassis will sit empty and idle till I either sell them or score a deal on some SAS3 cards and new cables. The 8TB drives are currently running full speed and error free in my Chenbro 12 bay chassis. Some are acting as JBOD chassis connected to that same LSI card from above and some are running off PCIe 1x (4 port) SATA cards.


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[sfbayzfs]

Have you double-checked the firmware version on your 9201-16e card? Your experience with great writes, but tons of errors on reads is what happened with the P20.00.00 LSI firmware through a SAS expander in any OS other than Windows, and I experienced it firsthand myself! Upgrading to P20.00.04 when available fixed the issue, and once P20.00.07 came out I have put that on all of my SAS2 controllers with 0 issues so far other than known particular card quirks (such as a 9212-4i4e card will not reverse it's 4 SATA internal ports via an SFF-8087 reverse breakout cable unless it is running it's own firmware, 9211-8i firmware, etc. fails in this one cabling situation)

 

[CyberSkulls]

Have you double-checked the firmware version on your 9201-16e card? Your experience with great writes, but tons of errors on reads is what happened with the P20.00.00 LSI firmware through a SAS expander in any OS other than Windows, and I experienced it firsthand myself! Upgrading to P20.00.04 when available fixed the issue, and once P20.00.07 came out I have put that on all of my SAS2 controllers with 0 issues so far other than known particular card quirks (such as a 9212-4i4e card will not reverse it's 4 SATA internal ports via an SFF-8087 reverse breakout cable unless it is running it's own firmware, 9211-8i firmware, etc. fails in this one cabling situation)

I was on the .07 FW. I'm still clueless why I had so many issues. I started building out new 12 bay chassis to replace the HGST's anyway. But I may try rolling back the firmware to .04 just for sh!ts n giggles to see what it does.


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[denywinarto]

This probably nothing (hopefully it is) but i left it for a week for vacation and now the chassis fan sounds louder.. is this normal?
There was one blackout though.. but i'm using UPS to shut the host down so that the hdd stops spinning first..

 

[Gene]

Should only increase rpms due to heat in my experience. Maybe power it down and then back on

 

[Tritnaha]

Trying to get a hold of one of these, anyone got one for sale?