What is this in the U.2?

[fatherboard]

What is this thing?




I bought this cable for these two U.2 drives


I can connect the 2 big black things to the U.2 drives

the white one looks familiar (Sata) but this other one at the forefront (picture above) what is it meant for?




Is one Sata (white) enough to power the two U.2? what about the unknown (to me) pins on the U.2s and the extra cable thing?

 

[mattventura]

You can safely ignore the extra pins. They're sometimes used for manufacturer specific things but are not generally needed.

The single Molex power connector can power multiple drives. 3-4 drives is typical, so 2 should be fine.

The bottom connector is an MCIO connector to plug it into your motherboard. If you don't have that connector, then you either need to get a riser card (and turn on the appropriate bifurcation settings in your BIOS), or you got the wrong cable. What are you trying to plug the drives into?

 

[i386]

What is this thing?

Pins from the manufacturer for troubleshooting/debugging purposes. Some manufacturer have them at the front, some hide them under labels (picture of two hgst husmm sas ssds, one has a label over these connectors and one optane nvme ssd without any visible debug/troubleshooting connectors):

the white one looks familiar (Sata) but this other one at the forefront (picture above) what is it meant for?

That's the connector (mcio was the name I think) that goes to the host...

Is one Sata (white) enough to power the two U.2?

Probably yes, you have to check your psus data/spec sheet to see how much currrent it can provide on the sata connectors (the cables are specced for up to 4.5A per rail)