On Fri, Nov 07, 2008 at 05:46:36PM -0500, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
On Fri, 7 Nov 2008 at 2:35pm, nate wrote
Gordon McLellan wrote:
I guess I'm saying, if you interpret the name "Serial Attached Scsi" literally, then the Seagate ES.2 is not an SAS drive - it is not a scsi drive with a serial interface. However, if you interpret SAS as an interface standard, then the interface board determines what the drive is, more so than its mechanical construction.
SAS and SATA use the same physical interface, the drive mentioned is most definitely SATA. Largest SAS drive I have heard of myself is 400GB, same as the max size for FC drives.
No. No it isn't. It's SAS. The platters etc are the same hardware used in the SATA part, but the interface circuitry is native SAS. Note that they offer the drive in both SATA and SAS variants.
While SATA and SAS are *supposed* to be able to be mixed freely, my vendor has warned me that it doesn't always work out that well. They have seen compatibility issues using SATA drives on SAS controllers. So for applications where you want/need a SAS controller but still need big capacity, these are the drives they recommend.
Hehe, I think the somewhat confusing part about SAS is that you expect it to be a SCSI disk and have the corresponding performance level, but that won't necessarily be the case if its got SATA innards. :)
Ray