I would like to connect six HGST He10 SAS drives (model 0F27402) to a Lenovo M1215 HBA using direct cabling. I originally bought two SFF-8643 to 4*SATA breakout cables before seeing the drives as I naively thought the connector compatibility between SAS and SATA went in both directions (not so). After hours of research, I have reached the conclusion that I need SFF-8643 to 4*SFF-8680 cables (since everything is SAS 3.0) but I have read a handful of posts by people using the same HBA and SAS 3.0 drives with SFF-8643 to 4*SFF-8482 cables.
This has confused me considerably because the only SFF-8482 cables I can find say they are rated for SAS 2.0 (6Gb/s), although they do appear to be pin-compatible with the SFF-8680. In either case, suppliers of any of these cables appear to be very thin on the ground (particularly in the UK, where I am based) which makes me think I'm missing something important (or multiple things).
My question then is: how should I cable these drives to this HBA?
As a bonus, can anyone recommend learning resources that cover SAS 3.0 to help me answer questions like: what is the difference between SFF-8482 and SFF-8680? I have searched and searched but clear, up-to-date information seems maddeningly elusive.
Thanks in advance!
Best Answer
From my comment: SFF-8482 and SFF-8680 are essentially the same connector (fitting to a drive's back), the former SAS2-compliant, the latter also SAS3-compliant. With HDDs, this won't matter in practice as they won't go faster than SAS1 speed anyway.
You can find all details to SFF standards on snia.org.