this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
39 points (95.3% liked)

Selfhosted

40041 readers
657 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world
HybridSarcasm@lemmy.hybridsarcasm.xyz
39
If you were to suddenly come into possession of 12+ enterprise-grade SAS hard drives, how would you go about incorporating them into your homelab? (midwest.social)
submitted 9 months ago by archomrade@midwest.social to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
45 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Pretend your only other hardware is a repurposed HP Prodesk and your budget is bottom-barrel

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] IrishMASMS@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Looking past the folks recommending to sell them, it seems you have a handful of useful responses here (welcome to the internet & endless September). /snark Look past the naysayers, it will be fun and a learning experience just getting these drives up and running - a worthwhile experience IMHO.

I am down a similar path now, with a bunch of SAS drives. What I have learned/experienced so far:

  • Forget any USB docking stations or enclosures, they may advertise working for all SAS drives but are hit & miss expensive but cheaply made plastic crap.
  • There are a plethora of adapters available online that say you can convert SAS to SATA. Do not believe them - you need a SATA controller that also supports SAS. You may luck out and have a motherboard that has the right SATA chipset that supports SAS, you may not.

As others have mentioned in this thread, the easiest & optimal approach seems to be:

  • Get a low end workstation or server that supports SAS in the chipset and the drive bays
  • Get a low end workstation or server that supports SAS in the chipset and that you can add the drive bays you need
  • Get a low end workstation or server that you can install a controller card that supports SAS

I scored a free workstation from craigslist and one from freecycle, for another project on the workbench.

HTH, and good luck!

(Edited for formatting)

[–] archomrade@midwest.social 1 points 4 months ago

Yup, I ended up frankensteining a nas from various craigslist parts (i actually found a low-power business-class server motherboard that has worked out well for the purpose). Had to get a SAS HBA card and a couple SFF-8087 cables to do the job right, and I grabbed an old gaming case from the 2010's to hold it all, but it was relatively seamless. I had one of the drives go out already, but luckily I had it in a raid configuration with parity so it was just a matter of swapping out the drives and rebuilding.

It's been fun and rewarding, for sure! I'm glad I didn't sell them like these other dweebs told me to lol