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esc1729
Asked: 2014-01-11 00:17:14 +0800 CST

Cable compatibility: will SAS 6GB/s fallback to 3 GB/s?

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I’m just in the process of configuring a server for RAID 1 by inserting an IBM ServerRAID M1015 card and two Seagate ST2000NM0023 SAS drives. Both controller and drives are rated as 6 GB/s. Unfortunately I could only get a fan-out cable with 3 GB/s rating.

Question: can I use it? Will the controller or the disks realize this and fallback to slower transfer speeds or am I heading for troubles?

hardware-raid

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    LSI, which has to say a word about SAS, is telling us:

    Key 6 Gb/s SAS features:

    [...]

    • 6 Gb/s SAS operates over existing passive infrastructure
      • uses the existing backplanes and cables

    So no, neither the controller nor the disks would realize that a 3 GB/s SAS cable is used, but as the rating characteristics seem not to have changed, it would operate at 6 GB/s speeds as designed.

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  2. It should work at 6Gbps. But you've already purchased everything. Build it up and go from there.

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