MicroServer N40L Question

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smccloud

Member
Jun 4, 2013
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I have an old N40L that is dead. PSU went out and after replacement, it worked for a while but eventually the board died. My question is the following, will the backplane it came with handle SAS drives or will it only handle SATA drives? A quick flashlight check looks like SAS drives should plug in. Am I right in thinking this?
 

RTM

Well-Known Member
Jan 26, 2014
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Ok, time to buy the cables & adapters I need then.
I just read through it again, it might not be as clear as I initially thought.
It can be interpreted as the SAS drives are the 2.5" drives and maybe the 3.5" drives, but honestly I am not sure.
 

smccloud

Member
Jun 4, 2013
325
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I just read through it again, it might not be as clear as I initially thought.
It can be interpreted as the SAS drives are the 2.5" drives and maybe the 3.5" drives, but honestly I am not sure.
Well, I'll be getting 600GB 3.5" SAS drives (I think 10k). They will be used as cache drives by my unRAID server.
 

WANg

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Jun 10, 2018
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The cabling on the back of the N40L/MSG7 were 4 SATA data/power breakouts on the drive bay all terminate on the original board in a Mini-SAS connector (don't remember if it's SFF8086 or 8087) - I wish that I took photos during the big teardown/cleanup from 2 weeks ago when I had the fan out to clean it and the back-side of the cage (and its cabling) were visible. You'll definitely need a board with a corresponding breakout and all the various craziness of fitting it into the MSG7 chassis. SAS...might work (I don't remember if there are plastics in the back of the cage breakout setup preventing you from physically plugging a SAS drive into the cage).

Just out of the curiosity, what are you replacing the N40L board with? The old N40L board definitely cannot do SAS (unless you get a PCIe SAS card).
 
Last edited:

smccloud

Member
Jun 4, 2013
325
12
18
The cabling on the back of the N40L/MSG7 was 4 SATA data/power breakouts on the drive bay all terminate on the original board in a Mini-SAS connector (don't remember if it's SFF8086 or 8087) - I wish that I took photos during the big teardown/cleanup from 2 weeks ago when I had the fan out to clean it and the back-side of the cage (and its cabling) were visible. You'll definitely need a board with a corresponding breakout and all the various craziness of fitting it into the MSG7 chassis. SAS...might work (I don't remember if there are plastics in the back of the cage breakout setup preventing you from physically plugging a SAS drive into the cage).

Just out of the curiosity, what are you replacing the N40L board with? The old N40L board definitely cannot do SAS (unless you get a PCIe SAS card).
I pulled the board out completely. Just using something to turn the PSU on & an SFF-8087 to SFF-8088 adapter in one of the expansion slots.