SAS UltraStar HDD with U.2 Motherboard Port

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dahorde

New Member
Apr 27, 2022
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I am currently only using SATA drives and have an SAS hard drive arriving in a few days. My motherboard has two U.2 ports with 4 dedicated PCIe lanes each. I read somewhere that a U.2 port can support two SAS drives (no mention of SAS in the EVGA x299 FTW-K motherboard manual).

Do I just need a cable that can connect the drive's SAS port to the motherboard's U.2 port?
 

BlueFox

Legendary Member Spam Hunter Extraordinaire
Oct 26, 2015
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While the same physical connector is also used for SAS connectivity, you have to have a SAS HBA for SAS drives to be supported, which is not something your motherboard has integrated. You will only be able to connect NVMe drives to the U.2 port.
 

dahorde

New Member
Apr 27, 2022
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Do all the encrypting HBAs require the purchase of an add-on license or hardware key to enable the encryption?
 

dahorde

New Member
Apr 27, 2022
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I found cheap HP P440 controllers with 8 ports, but the connector is a double-wide mini-SAS (x4 each for 8 lanes total), and my HC550s connect via 29-pin SFF-8680. I'm not sure if I could plug two mini-SAS connectors in (each attaching to 4 drives), or if I would instead have to use a cable with the proprietary double-wide connector and connect a more standard 4-drive breakout cable to that.