SATA SSD speeds on a 12Gb SAS HBA

[anon51817158]

I’m looking to build a storage array with 8 SATA SSDs in a RAID 5 array and was wondering; would using a 12Gb SAS HBA allow for faster speeds than a SATA 6Gb HBA or are the SATA drives limited entirely to 6Gb/s?

Thanks in advance!

[xwraith]

My understanding is no – you are limited by the interface on the SSD. So if the SSD has a SATA interface it will be capped at that speed.

I have this configuration mostly because when I bought my SSDs SATA was far cheaper, but if I ever saw a good deal on some used enterprise SAS SSDs I would have the option to use them. Also I could wire up far more drives via the HBA than with the onboard SATA interface and I wanted them on dedicated PCIe lanes.

[anon51817158]

That’s what I figured.

This is my thinking as well, but since this is for a personal storage array and nothing fantastical, should I just go for a SATA 6Gb HBA to save money?

Also, with the theoretical speeds of the RAID array, would read speeds exceed 6Gb/s? I’m thinking no, but I haven’t found any conclusive testing done in my web searches.

[Log]

SATA 6Gb HBA to save money

The other factor here is that they use less power and are much easier to cool with any 40mm fan. The 12Gbps ones expect full server airflow, and you’ll basically need a 12v blower fan on it to keep it cool and error free in a low airflow/static pressure case.

And for some reason, HBA firmware doesn’t seem to report temperature that you can access from the CLI. I’ve got one that will light up an LED if it gets too hot, but the card straight up won’t tell you what it’s temperature is. It’s the dumbest shit.

[anon51817158]

I have a high airflow tower, but if there’s no benefit to using a 12Gb HBA then yeah, I’ll do some user review research on a SATA HBA.

Sounds like a good use case for the thermistor that came with my motherboard.

Thank you for the input.

[Zedicus]

the benefit of a SAS HBA is they are reliable and easy to come by as lots of enterprise offload them cheap.

a Dell H330 is 75$ used. a quality SATA only HBA that has good support will cost more. some of the SATA HBA cards actually use a SAS controller but just have physical SATA ports mounted on them anyway. i can do that with a adapter cable and have the feature if i need it latter.