Quick question, SAS 2

[RadeonProVega]

I'm about to buy two of these, for my dell workstation computer. Great same for 1tb drives
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Seagate-LS...rlb8Fmd:sc:USPSPriority!21114!US!-1:rk:2:pf:0

Would these work the same as Sata hard drives? I never heard of SAS2. It has the same connection, but what's the difference between SAS2 and SATA2 and 3.
Thanks.

 

[taz420nj]

They will not work unless you have a SAS controller (most higher end RAID cards). Onboard ports will not be SAS, they will be SATA. SAS controllers CAN control SATA drives, but SATA controllers can NOT control SAS drives. SAS stands for Serial Attached SCSI, which is a different command set than SATA. SAS controllers are bilingual and can autodetect which command set to use. SATA controllers are not.

SAS2 indicates the interface speed, just like SATA 1,2, and 3. SAS2 is the same speed as SATA3 (6Gb/s). SAS3 is 12Gb/s, and SAS4 is 22.5Gb/s

 

[RadeonProVega]

oh, so guess i will stick with Sata ones. good thing i ask before buying lol. Let me go look for some Sata drives

 

[taz420nj]

Also beware of ebay drives. There are plenty of sellers that buy bulk server pulls with tens of thousands of hours on them, they wipe the SMART data, and sell them as "refurbished" (lots claim to be "factory refurbished" to boot). Their "Refurbishing" process consists of little more than 1. Remove drives from crate 2. Insert drives into bulk interface 3. Low level format 4. Flash over SMART 5. Seal in static bag 6. Sell to unsuspecting dupe. No actual testing, no nothing. Half the time they don't even clean the 5 years of dust off them. DOA's are incredibly common.

 

[RadeonProVega]

Also beware of ebay drives. There are plenty of sellers that buy bulk server pulls with tens of thousands of hours on them, they wipe the SMART data, and sell them as "refurbished" (lots claim to be "factory refurbished" to boot). Their "Refurbishing" process consists of little more than 1. Remove drives from crate 2. Insert drives into bulk interface 3. Low level format 4. Flash over SMART 5. Seal in static bag 6. Sell to unsuspecting dupe. No actual testing, no nothing. Half the time they don't even clean the 5 years of dust off them. DOA's are incredibly common.

Oh i buy from ebay all the time, i usually buy from the same sellers. I haven't had any issues so far for the 3 years i have been using ebay. I trust ebay more than anything. Hard drives has been working just fine. I just bought one from the same seller a few mins ago. The only issue i had was last year, i bought a purple external hard drive, and my drive came like 2 weeks yet , but the seller sent the money back way before that happen. But he didn't want the money back, he just told me to keep the drive. So because of that, i bought my workstation gaming desktop from him.

Good to only deal with the same sellers all the time

 

[taz420nj]

I wasn't trying to imply that there aren't reputable sellers, but the shady ones far outnumber the good ones.

Happy New Year!

 

[phill]

Drives are one thing I've not really bought second hand but if I have ever had a used drive, I put it through it's paces and make sure it's well tested before I put it anywhere near a PC storage that I need to put valuable data on to it.. It's not worth the risk of that..

I was unaware that the SMART status could be wiped? But if it can be (and I'm sure there's Youtube vids showing you how if there is....) then what a right pain in the butt that is... I've also not seen any SAS 4 spec'd drives out there at all that I know of. Even when specing up servers for work, I don't recall seeing them, 12Gb models yes, but no SAS 4's? I've been looking at a few raid controllers for home but I am definitely considering the 12Gb models over the slightly older 6Gb models I've previously owned and tested

I suppose you could always just ask and see if they could advise what sort of drive life it's had. I've a few myself that I have had that have definitely been used well and on for long hours, but as long as the drives haven't been stopped and started (turned off and on) every 5 minutes constantly, I think they'd be ok. Having NAS drives (bit different to servers considering the amount of use server drives can have) on 24/7 is better than having to start it every day or every few hours..
@taz420nj gives some good advice. My thoughts are, if something is feeling like it's too good to be true, then it probably is

 

[taz420nj]

Drives are one thing I've not really bought second hand but if I have ever had a used drive, I put it through it's paces and make sure it's well tested before I put it anywhere near a PC storage that I need to put valuable data on to it.. It's not worth the risk of that..

I usually don't on principle but I've gotten some from various vendors if I had a customer that was in a financial bind and needed one really cheap (knowing that there wouldn't be a warranty of course), or if they had an older machine and just needed one to get them through until they could afford a new computer. They all showed "virgin" SMART. But again I would never buy used for myself. I did end up with 8 used drives that were mistakenly listed as new though one time, and those were for my media server. They are 2TB Hitachi Ultrastars (enterprise), and had anywhere between 20,000 and 35,000 hours on them. The seller apologized profusely and gave me a full refund and told me to keep them, so I've been using them for about 3 years now and they are still healthy. I can't complain since I ended up getting them for free. But these are all in a RAID-6 array so I am not really worried if they start to fail. I'd have to lose 3 at the same time in order to lose all of my data, and when the first one fails I will just start buying new ones and replacing the whole array proactively one by one.

I was unaware that the SMART status could be wiped? But if it can be (and I'm sure there's Youtube vids showing you how if there is....) then what a right pain in the butt that is...

It's actually pretty simple. There's software that can do it in minutes. With Seagates you don't even need a program, it's done by issuing commands through the drive's serial interface.

I've also not seen any SAS 4 spec'd drives out there at all that I know of. Even when specing up servers for work, I don't recall seeing them, 12Gb models yes, but no SAS 4's? I've been looking at a few raid controllers for home but I am definitely considering the 12Gb models over the slightly older 6Gb models I've previously owned and tested

SAS4 is a new spec, the first drives won't be out until sometime this year and they'll be SSD only (since SAS3 basically hits the mechanical limits of even 15k drives).

I suppose you could always just ask and see if they could advise what sort of drive life it's had. I've a few myself that I have had that have definitely been used well and on for long hours, but as long as the drives haven't been stopped and started (turned off and on) every 5 minutes constantly, I think they'd be ok. Having NAS drives (bit different to servers considering the amount of use server drives can have) on 24/7 is better than having to start it every day or every few hours..
@taz420nj gives some good advice. My thoughts are, if something is feeling like it's too good to be true, then it probably is

A shady company that wipes the SMART data isn't going to tell you that. Yeah power on count is definitely an important attribute that will affect the spindle motor life but drives up there in hours my concern would be the spindle bearing (for which you look at spin-up time). Enterprise drives are definitely going to fare better for longer after they build up a few years worth of hours, I definitely would not touch a used consumer drive with a ten foot pole.

 

[phill]

I am the same, never a second hand drive but when your given things like Enterprise drives for free, you tend not to push them away and keep hold I'm going to start using a program called Killdisk that will wipe the data but also check the drive as it's going through it, which I thought might be a good idea.. I don't tend to put much data on the server stuff I have, just my NAS at the moment (running out of room and wondering what raid to use but that's another story) but I have that ability to do it now which is great

Well I won't be buying Enterprise SSD's in SAS 4 spec then lol Jesus they will be massively quick! Look forward to the reviews on those!

I was going along with anyone that you're asking for drives, if you buy a 'brand new' Enterprise drive for a tenner for argument then you know something is a little too good to be true... I think that bit is common sense, but the ones from Ebay, if they start failing or simply don't work from the moment you plug them in, you can always claim (worse case) through ebay for money back.. I'd always just run a test to begin with and check the drive stats, if something doesn't look right, as you've pointed out, it's probably a dodgy drive and one that has been deleted. I'm so surprised that it happens...

 

[SoNic67]

As a side note, used SAS Raid cards are not that expensive. And usually come with cables - SAS to (4) SATA or SAS to SAS.
As for used HDD's... I'll take an Enterprise HDD that was spinning for 4-5 years in a controlled temperature environment with no power on/off cycles any time versus a new "value" HDD.