I’ve added 6 feet of cables between my main server and an external drive tower.
That tower’s drives are now spewing errors when I turn on the system.
Is having about 10 feet worth of cables between the expander and the drives most likely the problem? Or should the distance not be an issue?
SATA or SAS? SATA, yes, SAS, maybe.
About 1 meter for SATA. Just do internet search for your type
I’m using SAS 12Gb/s drives and controllers.
Easiest is just point you to 10GTek and the External SAS Cable section. Not sure what you have strung together. This is just an example of what is offered and lengths. Have you verified all cables and equipment at shorter distances?
Before, I was running the drives off 3-foot 8644-to-SATA breakout cables and all was well.
Now I’m using SATA to 8643 and 6-foot male-to-male 8644 cables, making the distance 10 feet total.
You need to list the full hardware setup for others to double check. If you had a SAS HBA with external connection to a SAS disk shelf with SATA drive you might have been fine but it sounds like you go to SATA and are getting stuck at the 1 meter limit
Another discussion I found
Okay, I’ll give you the details.
This photo was taken before the change, but looks close enough to my current setup.
The tower on the right holds a Super Micro X10SRH-CF motherboard with integrated LSI SAS 12Gb/s controller. The controller’s ports are connected to an Adaptec 82885T expander, which connects to a pair of Rosewill “RSV-SATA-Cage-34” 4-in-3 SAS/SATA hot swap cages using 3-foot cables.
https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rsv-sata-cage-34-hard-disk-drive-cage/p/N82E16816132037
Today I installed another pair of RSV-SATA-Cage-34 cages in the left tower, they have 3-foot SAS cables connected to an internal-to-external adapter installed in a PCI slot, which then connects to the right tower’s Adaptec 82285T expander’s external ports using 6-foot cables.
I’m using HGST SAS 12Gb/s drives, so the only “SATA” components are the SAS forward breakout cables, and the 4 connectors on the back of each drive cage.
From that other thread you posted, I could install another expander in the left tower to act as a repeater if that’s the most likely solution.
