Are the four HP Z8 G4 factory supplied Hard drive SATA cables capable of 12gbps and support SAS ?

[StevieTee]

I've recently purchased the MicroSemi SmartHBA2100-4i4e SAS Controller add-in card for the Z8 G4 (not knowing prior  to buying the Z8 G4 that unlike the previous generation Z series workstations, the Z8 G4 has no onboard SAS controller ports and instead relies on an add-in SAS/Raid card).

The SAS Hard Drives I will be using are capable of 12gbps, my question is are the 4 factory supplied hard drive cables which run from the backplate where the hard drive caddies fit to the corresponding SATA ports on the motherboard also capable of supplying 12gbps or do I need to replace those 4 cables to ones capable of providing full throughput for the SAS drives.

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

SAS/SATA cables are the same exact thing (although dual port cables do exist) and are interchangeable there is no difference between a SATA 3/6GBps and a SAS 6/12GBps cable itself although the connecting ends can differ depending on if connecting to a backplane, external connector or directly to a drive

there are numerous venders selling these cables and the build quality can vary somewhat so if possible stay with name brand ones if possible i've personally used no name and brand name and both work well but the name brand had better latching mechanisms

also for a SAS/SATA card i preferer the adaptec ASR-8405/8805 cards over the LSI 93xx cards due to the adaptec supporting SAS/SATA and RAID/JBOD (the performanced based LSI based cards are one or the other Raid or HBA)

one last thing, connecting SAS 6 and SAS 12 drives on the same port will usually result in all drives running at 6GBps speeds although some controllers are flexible in this regard

[StevieTee]

Thanks for the detailed reply. I shall investigate the Adaptec cards.