i’m looking at Intel Optane 2.5" U.2 drives and on the front of my server, i have 4 spare bays that i could use as Special Metadata Devices as i thought it would be a pretty good way to speed up my array. I had a look for an adapter that would convert U.2 to SATA, and i haven’t been able to find one. Is this because this isn’t possible or i just haven’t looked around enough?
Do the bays hold 3.5" drives? If so, you may get away with a workaround: U.2 to M.2 then M.2 to SATA. In theory that should fit within the footprint of a 3.5" drive. But at that contraption you’re probably better off (at least cheaper!) with plain SATA SSD’s.
Just getting this straight. You want to connect a U.2 device to a SATA port?
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they don’t hold 3.5" drives, only 2.5", probably should have specified that in the post. i could theoretically use a pcie card, i was just wondering if what i’m asking exists or is possible
Yeah, pretty much. Is that not possible? I’ve never used U.2 devices before so I don’t particularly understand if its just the interface that is different or something else that would make it not work.
I went and had a look to see what protocol U.2 uses and realised its PCIe, which I should have known from the start, so I’m guessing this isn’t an adapter that exists?
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Not only is the connector different… you’re trying to move NVMe → SATA. Which makes little sense.
If you absolutely must have U.2 drives then think about U.2 → M.2
@wendell also had a video about how he did it on the example of Intel U.2 → PCI, if I remember correctly…
The general rule of thumb is that you should stay in the NVMe range… Whether it will be a dedicated PCI card for U.2 or an M.2 slot is up to you.
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Yeah I’ve realised that now, and I literally watched that video today haha. I might just use a PCIe card, that U.2 to M.2 adapter also does seem like a good choice and something that I’ll look into. I completely forgot U.2 is PCIe.
Another question though, how well do SATA SSDs work as Special Metadata Devices in TrueNAS then? Since that was going to be my use case for the U.2 SSDs if I were to get them.
Thanks, I think something like that would be my best option, I’ll have a look around, I’ve already found a post on here discussing [PCIe to U.2 card recommendations.] (https://forum.level1techs.com/t/wanted-recommendation-pcie-4-0-to-u-2-card/194723/3)
I know I originally asked a pretty stupid question, but thanks to you all for pointing me in the right direction.
Never used this forum before, I’m guessing thats not how you insert links?
On your first day (or two), you can not post links. That is to prevent link-spamming bots from flooding the place.
After that, you can just paste your links into posts.
Or, if you need your link to be part of the text, do this:
[link goes here](URL goes here)Ohhh, okay thanks, so I was doing it right. I was a little confused for a second because I pasted the link into the box and it formatted it correctly like markdown, which I’ve used, but then didn’t work so I thought I was doing it wrong. Thank you.
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