I brought a few dozen hard drives before the pandemic because some guys were selling these 750GB and 1TB drives in enclosures to me for $3 each. Most of them are SATA and I tested them to be good. There were a few that I was not able to connect and didn't know what it was until recently I found out that that they are SAS. Was looking for a way to connect to the SAS drives to test them out. I got some connectors from Aliexpress that went from SAS to SATA but then found out that you would need a SAS controller card to be able to detect the drives. So the external SAS drive seems to a viable solution just to test the drives. I did see that same exact drive at Amazon for over $100 even with a coupon. Great that you have this video and myself and everyone able to learn about the experience.
Nitpicking, but your table is a DL360, not a DL380. You can tell that Lenovo is your preference. I have only worked with Compaq/HP(E) hardware. Never knew a SAS docking station did exist. Years ago I did throw a bunch of HP 2.5” 600 GB HDDs away because I couldn’t find a cheap solution to use them in a normal desktop. SAS PCIe controllers were expensive. And I didn’t want to only use them in my (old office) HP DL360 Gen8 servers. I got rid of the servers and bought a cheap Aliexpress X79 EATX motherboard to use one of the Xenon E5-2560 CPUs and 8x 8 GB DDR3 memory. But seeing your test shows that this solution isn’t workable. Thanks for the video, honest test, showing bad products too.
Poor drive performance is one of the reasons why I avoid using USB and use something like e-sata. Nice thing about e-sata it talks to the motherboard directly without any kind of overhead or conversion. My current motherboard lacked onboard e-sata connector but a simple $15 4 port e-sata bracket fixed that issue.
It's definitely the controller in the docking station that is crappy... I've not seen any SAS2USB docking stations that works well. But i like the idea..... 🙂
Hi Quennn Pfeufa I do get this question from time to time, so I have added it to my F.A.Q. that you can check out under the "about" tab here on my channel. I give a longer answer there. docs.google.com/document/d/10tNReA70PsMT4dnyyg6-DdCyFEVcAI9WMizq1SNBibY/edit?usp=sharing Thank you for watching! :-)
That docking box was disappointing.. They promised 10x bigger speed.. Hope, that only box died and it didn't become a SAS drive killer.. Thanks for review! 👍 For next video - what's inside in that docking station and is there correct drive power voltages generated? 😉
Yeahh theyre crazy expensive. They have sas to sata conversion cables, provided your drives can work in SATA mode. The Seagate exos SAS drives i just got are able to. Theyre like 6 dollars each on ebay. Im using them from my SATA readers and a hp prodesk 600 g2 mini as a media server. Until i deploy my old dual socket server with raid controller that supports sas native
can you format the sas drive and use it as an offline archive? when i need those files pull it out and plug it in and just copy my files, could that be a option for upcycle?
Thank you for the review, I was looking for an adapter to my Dell SAS, and I found that brand. I am expecting a quote from the company, but seeing the price and performance results, it's not worth. Any other adapter you'd recommend?
I have a question about the sector size of the hard drives. Server RAID setups normally use 520 bytes sectors and normal useable is 512 bytes ??? But that would not change the actual operation of the device speeds.
in hard disk/ssd if you format big sector size it will waste space when you write small file. Let say you fade 1KB file and sector size is 512b. Then i will take 2 sectors for this data. But if you 4KB sector , the file use whole sector(min space waste of 3KB). the mechanical speed is same at small and bigger sector size. I think the fastest speed is more sectros = small sectors size. Why do you need less sectors? of the partition big = a lot of sectoros you will over the pointer limit 16bits = 2^16 sectors .
having run out of PCIe channels, I too am looking at these things. it seems that (from taobao comments at least) the cable provided can be actually the problem and limiting you to USB 2.0 speeds. try getting your own USB-A to USB-B 3.0 cable. it's astonishing how we have more products converting from serial-ata to usb-attached scsi than we have converting seial-attached scsi to usb-attached scsi. you'd think it's easier to do no translation, but the market has spoken... and unlike CD-ROMs you can't even use ATAPI to speak to a SCSI hard drive. oops.
The power supply is likely not good enough to deliver to the spinning drives, the drive startup would need more current. Im not sure of the true throughput using usb3, and the conversion chip will have some loss. Dont be fooled by (Up to....) just like the internet conection speed, its not 100% all the time. I think the internet speedsare just a lie.
I had that thought as well,, and is why I had tested some more drives at the end... first it looked like that 5v 0.7A was a limit,, but I tested drives that used more,, and they was okay :-?
Why do you always turn the docking off and on when changing disks? SAS is Hotswap Compatible😅 45 Mb/s is a lame duck, it is a Chinese quality product 🤣🤣🤣
I have a similar external drive doc, from a company called MAIWO, but much cheaper for $90. It is identical to the IndMem you had. And it is flaky also. This a classic chinese pice o' junk from an anonymous mfr in Shenzhen, who is having it resold by various other companies. Extremely disappointing.
fyi not all of those can be easily converted, some EMC hitachi drives require special tools to load different firmware on the drive to allow you to do a 512b format... have not had issues converting the netapp drives (yet)
Could be an incompatibility between the usb-chipset in your pc an the bridge-chip in the dockingstation. Give it a try on a intel-based pc/notebook. Perhaps you could try a usb-PCIe Bridge and a SAS HBA. But that's a McGuyver solution. Try to put some tape on it 😉
I had that thought as well,, so the Lenovo T590 laptop is an intel,, and the Tiny M75q is an AMD,, and the USB key did do 100MB/s,,, it is a mystery to me.
@@MyPlayHouse You could open the Dockingstation and read the Name of the bridge-Chip and try to find the right drivers for it. "generic usb..." is always bad in the device manager. Another way is to look for vendor-id and device-id in the device manager. With this you can find the vendor and the chip-model.
A question somewhat off topic, does any manufacturer sell external SATA tower enclosures capable of storing 18TB hard drives? I can buy single drive enclosures all day for 18TB drives but I want a single enclosure that holds 4 or 5 drives. Next, since my HP MSA-60 enclosure only works with up to 8TB SATA drives are there any MSA’s that are capable of using 18TB drives? That would be the ultimate enclosure!!
@@MyPlayHouse The new Seagate 18TB Exos worked flawlessly in the HP MSA60! I was very surprised and extremely happy. Thanks for the suggestion! Now to cull the failing and smaller hard drives and replace them with 18TB Exos drives so I can shut down all unneeded energy hogs and save a few hundred dollars each month.
Hi My PlayHouse, I was looking for a SAS controller (SAS to USB) for my 8 8TB drives. I have a unit similar to the one you are testing and I am seeing 250MB/s (not as good as the servers I have used these drives with but still very good). You can see my video if you wanted.
I am a bit late to this, only thing I would recommend is a sas card with sas break out cables (get medium size sff pc that has a pci-e slot so you can install a half hight 4 port sas card in it mode) Note unless the dell emc or hpe/NetApp drives (usually in 520 mode so they can store sector based Checksum so works like btrfa/zfs ) have been reformatted to 512e or 4kn or they won't work in windows or truenas (as they don't support non standard logical sector sizes)
My two SAS drives, Seagate Exos 7E8, 8TB each (mfg 2019) keep showing as RAW drive. I bought these for backup but the entire backup disappears as the drives are not detected after transferring data to them. Fortunately, though with lots of hours wasted, I was able to retrieve lost data with Disk Drill. Any solution? I also used an Indmem SAS dock bought on eBay. Edit... In my case, the drive consistently transferred recovery data @135 to 140 MB/s over several hours.
I had that box (SATA 2 drive version with harwware drive cloneing option) I think tha USB 3.0 iss tp slow for big drives that kind of device will be better if usess esata or some kaind of pci connectionm on my sevice I had problems with a see aa drives fo r tor exsample thoshiba or five of my ssd drives PC not see thats trives on windows or for wird reason losting them when i Tray get acccess to installed drive - windows losting that device, not only istalled HDD or ssd on that device. cone function I never tested on that device.
I bought 100 sas netapps hard drive, they are super slow, copy file at 100mb/s. While the non netapps are at 200mb above. tested every dell hp sea gate toshiba, all same results! Any help?
Dock seem it usb2 with 2 channel. Usb2 had 4 pins Usb3 had 8 pins. The box use old controler ( 2 x usb2) but not fast controler. Usb2 data 500Mb/sec usb3 5000Mb/sec and upto 10Gb/sec ( usb3 gen2 superspeed)
i would get a normal desktop pc with 5.25inch drives and install a hotswap bay in them that supports sas and an lsi it mode. i got a hotswap bay that says sata yet sas drives fit in idk if sas drives work in it tho as don't have sas drives laying arround
If SAS drives fit and it is connected to a SAS controller then SAS drives should work fine. I use SAS drives in a SATA 2.5->3.5 adapter in my server and it works fine.
I disagree,, this is expensive because, the market for this is very niche. SAS is better than SATA the same way that a bus is better than a car, if you are moving a football team.
@@MyPlayHouse what are the advantages of SAS? Slow load speed? When additional tools cost like they are made of gold? An impossibility to connect to an usual pc directly even on low speed?
It windows 7 i this , the best and much stable opartion system. Windows 10,11 is shit and slow at same cpu. The new cpu dont work on windows 7 whatever you do.
Seems like an expensive SAS version of the cheap SATA docks that I've bought over the years. Just looked in my ewaste bin and there's 5 old SATA docks that all gave up after a few months. That's the problem with buying from China - costs more to return them.
I brought a few dozen hard drives before the pandemic because some guys were selling these 750GB and 1TB drives in enclosures to me for $3 each. Most of them are SATA and I tested them to be good. There were a few that I was not able to connect and didn't know what it was until recently I found out that that they are SAS.
Was looking for a way to connect to the SAS drives to test them out. I got some connectors from Aliexpress that went from SAS to SATA but then found out that you would need a SAS controller card to be able to detect the drives.
So the external SAS drive seems to a viable solution just to test the drives. I did see that same exact drive at Amazon for over $100 even with a coupon. Great that you have this video and myself and everyone able to learn about the experience.
Well,, I was also looking for an easy way of testing/using SAS disks,, I was not that happy with this one :-/
Nitpicking, but your table is a DL360, not a DL380. You can tell that Lenovo is your preference. I have only worked with Compaq/HP(E) hardware.
Never knew a SAS docking station did exist. Years ago I did throw a bunch of HP 2.5” 600 GB HDDs away because I couldn’t find a cheap solution to use them in a normal desktop. SAS PCIe controllers were expensive. And I didn’t want to only use them in my (old office) HP DL360 Gen8 servers. I got rid of the servers and bought a cheap Aliexpress X79 EATX motherboard to use one of the Xenon E5-2560 CPUs and 8x 8 GB DDR3 memory.
But seeing your test shows that this solution isn’t workable. Thanks for the video, honest test, showing bad products too.
No I do not own a DL360,, it is a DL380 Gen9
SAS docking station are very rare,,, I have only seen this one.
Poor drive performance is one of the reasons why I avoid using USB and use something like e-sata. Nice thing about e-sata it talks to the motherboard directly without any kind of overhead or conversion. My current motherboard lacked onboard e-sata connector but a simple $15 4 port e-sata bracket fixed that issue.
Hi Noah Darby
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Thank you for the review! Saves the headache for others :)
Hi myc0p
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Would be very interested to see if these USB to SAS converters would work with an LTO drive.
Not at this speed.
It's definitely the controller in the docking station that is crappy... I've not seen any SAS2USB docking stations that works well. But i like the idea..... 🙂
Yes the idea is great,, but this is too slow for anything else then a bit of testing it out.
Hey Morten, what is that background music? I tried to Shazam it but it didn’t work :/
Hi Quennn Pfeufa
I do get this question from time to time, so I have added it to my F.A.Q. that you can check out under the "about" tab here on my channel. I give a longer answer there.
docs.google.com/document/d/10tNReA70PsMT4dnyyg6-DdCyFEVcAI9WMizq1SNBibY/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you for watching! :-)
That docking box was disappointing.. They promised 10x bigger speed.. Hope, that only box died and it didn't become a SAS drive killer.. Thanks for review! 👍
For next video - what's inside in that docking station and is there correct drive power voltages generated? 😉
Humm take it apart :-)
@@MyPlayHouse yes , tell us what the main chip controler in this dock and we will can know if it scam.
Also see the build quality/PCB/capasitor
Yeahh theyre crazy expensive. They have sas to sata conversion cables, provided your drives can work in SATA mode. The Seagate exos SAS drives i just got are able to. Theyre like 6 dollars each on ebay. Im using them from my SATA readers and a hp prodesk 600 g2 mini as a media server. Until i deploy my old dual socket server with raid controller that supports sas native
Hi @JK-gm6kk
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
can you format the sas drive and use it as an offline archive? when i need those files pull it out and plug it in and just copy my files, could that be a option for upcycle?
I already do this,, but not with this SAS dongle,, it is a bit slow.
@@MyPlayHouse which adaptor do you use that is acceptable for you?
@@DJZofPCB I use a server with a HBA controller.
Thank you for the review, I was looking for an adapter to my Dell SAS, and I found that brand. I am expecting a quote from the company, but seeing the price and performance results, it's not worth.
Any other adapter you'd recommend?
Glad I could help,, I was disappointed :-/
Get a cable, then 3D print the rest?
This is for SAS drives,,, it is not normal.
"Completely disapointed, I left to build a wall in Portugal ...." (C)2022 Morten
Build that wall :-) I am back again,, in Denmark
Where did you acquired the external USB 3.0? I have a lot oF SAS disk, but I cant find a external SAS docking station.
Links in the description.
@@MyPlayHouse Thanks. By fault, didn't see the description. :)
is it backward compatible with sata? did you try a sata drive in it?
I do not think so...
I have a question about the sector size of the hard drives.
Server RAID setups normally use 520 bytes sectors and normal useable is 512 bytes ???
But that would not change the actual operation of the device speeds.
no, servers generally use 512 (or more recently 4k) sectors, 520b sectors are used mostly in SANs like netapp/emc etc
Nahh a normal raid controller uses 512,, large storages systems like DELL EMC may use 520... I am told that the extra bits,, are for more security.
in hard disk/ssd if you format big sector size it will waste space when you write small file.
Let say you fade 1KB file and sector size is 512b. Then i will take 2 sectors for this data.
But if you 4KB sector , the file use whole sector(min space waste of 3KB).
the mechanical speed is same at small and bigger sector size.
I think the fastest speed is more sectros = small sectors size.
Why do you need less sectors?
of the partition big = a lot of sectoros you will over the pointer limit 16bits = 2^16 sectors .
I just checked Ali Express, don't look, you won't like the price. Cheaper to buy an old server that supports SAS.
They are bloody expensive,, I know! :-/
having run out of PCIe channels, I too am looking at these things. it seems that (from taobao comments at least) the cable provided can be actually the problem and limiting you to USB 2.0 speeds. try getting your own USB-A to USB-B 3.0 cable.
it's astonishing how we have more products converting from serial-ata to usb-attached scsi than we have converting seial-attached scsi to usb-attached scsi. you'd think it's easier to do no translation, but the market has spoken...
and unlike CD-ROMs you can't even use ATAPI to speak to a SCSI hard drive. oops.
Hi Mingye Wang
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Thanks for this....saved me from buying one of these
Happy to help,, and save you the trouble!
I got my music fix ....woooot ! !
Hi Relaxing Nature
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I just have that Seagate 10 TB SAS hard drive, so there won't be any device that recognizes me and I can connect to the PC.
I have not found anything else :-/
The power supply is likely not good enough to deliver to the spinning drives, the drive startup would need more current.
Im not sure of the true throughput using usb3, and the conversion chip will have some loss.
Dont be fooled by (Up to....) just like the internet conection speed, its not 100% all the time.
I think the internet speedsare just a lie.
I had that thought as well,, and is why I had tested some more drives at the end... first it looked like that 5v 0.7A was a limit,, but I tested drives that used more,, and they was okay :-?
Spinning disk need abot max 10W , usn3 can deliver up 2A and more in 5V.
the power supply not needed.
Usb2 power limit for example is 0.5A (2.5W)
Why do you always turn the docking off and on when changing disks? SAS is Hotswap Compatible😅 45 Mb/s is a lame duck, it is a Chinese quality product 🤣🤣🤣
I think I found that the hotswap did not really work.
Thats £240, bruh thats expensive
I do agree!! :-/
@@MyPlayHouse I saw one on amazon for £15 that i belive was sas but i can't find it now
I have a similar external drive doc, from a company called MAIWO, but much cheaper for $90. It is identical to the IndMem you had. And it is flaky also. This a classic chinese pice o' junk from an anonymous mfr in Shenzhen, who is having it resold by various other companies. Extremely disappointing.
Mine is just slow :-/
Thats a damn old usb-b conector, no surprise of this terrible performance...
Well I would still expect a bit more than this :-/
Honestly, try to get Your money back.
I read this,, and I have now written to the seller.
It would be nice if this could be used under linux to convert Netapp or EMC drives back to 512 byte from 520 byte.
fyi not all of those can be easily converted, some EMC hitachi drives require special tools to load different firmware on the drive to allow you to do a 512b format... have not had issues converting the netapp drives (yet)
It is possible to do this in windows,, as I showed in this video : ruclips.net/video/5OLdRj-lCkE/видео.html
Could be an incompatibility between the usb-chipset in your pc an the bridge-chip in the dockingstation. Give it a try on a intel-based pc/notebook.
Perhaps you could try a usb-PCIe Bridge and a SAS HBA. But that's a McGuyver solution. Try to put some tape on it 😉
I had that thought as well,, so the Lenovo T590 laptop is an intel,, and the Tiny M75q is an AMD,, and the USB key did do 100MB/s,,, it is a mystery to me.
@@MyPlayHouse You could open the Dockingstation and read the Name of the bridge-Chip and try to find the right drivers for it. "generic usb..." is always bad in the device manager. Another way is to look for vendor-id and device-id in the device manager. With this you can find the vendor and the chip-model.
A question somewhat off topic, does any manufacturer sell external SATA tower enclosures capable of storing 18TB hard drives?
I can buy single drive enclosures all day for 18TB drives but I want a single enclosure that holds 4 or 5 drives.
Next, since my HP MSA-60 enclosure only works with up to 8TB SATA drives are there any MSA’s that are capable of using 18TB drives? That would be the ultimate enclosure!!
I would think that normal DAS cabinets will work with 18TB
@@MyPlayHouse I ordered a new 18TB drive that will be here on Thursday. I'll definitely try it in my HPE MSA60 and let you know if it works or not.
@@MyPlayHouse The new Seagate 18TB Exos worked flawlessly in the HP MSA60! I was very surprised and extremely happy. Thanks for the suggestion!
Now to cull the failing and smaller hard drives and replace them with 18TB Exos drives so I can shut down all unneeded energy hogs and save a few hundred dollars each month.
Will it format from 520 to 512 with this dock?
I did not test that,,, :-/ I do not know..
Hi My PlayHouse, I was looking for a SAS controller (SAS to USB) for my 8 8TB drives. I have a unit similar to the one you are testing and I am seeing 250MB/s (not as good as the servers I have used these drives with but still very good). You can see my video if you wanted.
I did not get that :-/
Please share link
Check your USB/Chipset drivers
My USB key moved data with 100MB/s ,,, the Lenovo driver thingy,, thinks I am all good to go :-/
I am a bit late to this, only thing I would recommend is a sas card with sas break out cables (get medium size sff pc that has a pci-e slot so you can install a half hight 4 port sas card in it mode)
Note unless the dell emc or hpe/NetApp drives (usually in 520 mode so they can store sector based Checksum so works like btrfa/zfs ) have been reformatted to 512e or 4kn or they won't work in windows or truenas (as they don't support non standard logical sector sizes)
Well I do get all the comments,, even on old videos. This was a cool solution,, if it had worked a bit better. :-)
My two SAS drives, Seagate Exos 7E8, 8TB each (mfg 2019) keep showing as RAW drive. I bought these for backup but the entire backup disappears as the drives are not detected after transferring data to them. Fortunately, though with lots of hours wasted, I was able to retrieve lost data with Disk Drill.
Any solution? I also used an Indmem SAS dock bought on eBay.
Edit... In my case, the drive consistently transferred recovery data @135 to 140 MB/s over several hours.
My box is not that fast :-/
I had that box (SATA 2 drive version with harwware drive cloneing option) I think tha USB 3.0 iss tp slow for big drives that kind of device will be better if usess esata or some kaind of pci connectionm on my sevice I had problems with a see aa drives fo r tor exsample thoshiba or five of my ssd drives PC not see thats trives on windows or for wird reason losting them when i Tray get acccess to installed drive - windows losting that device, not only istalled HDD or ssd on that device. cone function I never tested on that device.
There is not many SAS docking stations,, this was the best I could find,, and it turned out not as good as I had hoped for.
I bought 100 sas netapps hard drive, they are super slow, copy file at 100mb/s. While the non netapps are at 200mb above. tested every dell hp sea gate toshiba, all same results! Any help?
NO, I have no idea,, but very interesting, maybe they are limited for use in the netapp.
Looks like the usual china USB 3.0 scam. i have had so many devices claiming usb 3 (blue ports + 5 pins) but really usb 2.0
It is for sure too slow :-/
Dock seem it usb2 with 2 channel.
Usb2 had 4 pins
Usb3 had 8 pins.
The box use old controler ( 2 x usb2) but not fast controler.
Usb2 data 500Mb/sec
usb3 5000Mb/sec and upto 10Gb/sec ( usb3 gen2 superspeed)
by the way ,the fastest 1TB mechanical disk that i see can read at 120MB/sec.
Yarh,, this is way to slow...
this dock is definitely a scam, extremely high price for bad perf
It did not work as hoped :-/
All of your links are either now dead or out of stock, just as an FYI.
Thank You,, it´s a bloody full time job to keep links ou and running :-) But I fixed them.
RUclips is messing up, and climes that I have not replied to this,, sorry for the "disturbance in the force" :-/
Hello, did you find some good option to connect SAS disk to PC?
No,, This was expensive,, and I got disappointed.
i would get a normal desktop pc with 5.25inch drives and install a hotswap bay in them that supports sas and an lsi it mode. i got a hotswap bay that says sata yet sas drives fit in idk if sas drives work in it tho as don't have sas drives laying arround
If SAS drives fit and it is connected to a SAS controller then SAS drives should work fine. I use SAS drives in a SATA 2.5->3.5 adapter in my server and it works fine.
Yes,, but this was an attempt to do it even simpler..
USB is Crap. Your speeds are restricted due to USB
No ,, something more is at play here..
200$ while the same adapter for sata costs starting from 20$... SAS just soaks
I disagree,, this is expensive because, the market for this is very niche. SAS is better than SATA the same way that a bus is better than a car, if you are moving a football team.
@@MyPlayHouse what are the advantages of SAS? Slow load speed? When additional tools cost like they are made of gold? An impossibility to connect to an usual pc directly even on low speed?
This is chinesium USB 0.3 not USB 3.0
That is properly not much off :-/
Exellent info,thankyou..
You are welcome,, it´s not as good as they claim,,at all.
i use a dl380 g6 for table posh mate we alike our kid
Hi Ian Fletcher
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
It seems your computer OS is upgraded to Windows 11 😀
It windows 7 i this , the best and much stable opartion system.
Windows 10,11 is shit and slow at same cpu.
The new cpu dont work on windows 7 whatever you do.
My PC is Win11 and my laptop is Win10
: )
Hi Ole Morten Njærheim
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
If the device with a USB3 connector doesn't say SuperSpeed (5Gb/s, or "SS") then it will probably only support Hi-Speed (480Mb/s).
Hi Daniel F. Smith
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Seems like an expensive SAS version of the cheap SATA docks that I've bought over the years. Just looked in my ewaste bin and there's 5 old SATA docks that all gave up after a few months. That's the problem with buying from China - costs more to return them.
Yes sending it back is not a great option.