[Guide] 8 Bay Mini-DAS!

There are some centronics mini-sas adapters on pc-pitstop, but they are over priced.

or ebay

https://www.ebay.com/itm/163942330966

bah I just realized that you had already purchased an alternative. I would just mod one of the brackets (snip-snip) and hot glue it =)

Thanks. I may still order that ebay one. That actually is perfect. I’m going to try to mod the half height bracket first and we’ll see how it goes. I guess I was thinking of drilling a couple of holes to mount it.

Maybe someone could design a new bracket to be 3D printed? :slight_smile:

I am going to take the 1/2 height pci bracket, snip off the end, drill 2 holes and see if I can mount what I have this week. I just got all the wires in and will post back when complete.

So I finally got the missing cable in to do the remaining clean up on the connectors. So I just spent $113 in connectors and cables to replace $30 ones but it is significantly more secure.

I added

2 - Two Ports Mini SAS SFF-8088 To SAS 36Pin SFF-8087 PCBA Female Adapter With PCI for $41

2 - Mini SAS 36P SFF-8643 to SAS 36P SFF-8087 Raid Data Server Cable 50cm US for $20

2 - CABLEDECONN Mini SAS26P SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 1M External Cable Attached SCSI for $32

2 - BORSVAEN Mini SAS to SATA Cable (SFF-8087 36Pin Male to 4 SATA 7Pin Female),Mini SAS Host to 4 SATA Target Hard Disk Data Cable - 0.5M for $20

TO REPLACE

2 CableDeconn Mini SAS 26P SFF 8088 Male to 4 SATA 4Pin Female 2m 6.6FT Cable with Latch,Mini SAS Host/Controller to 4 SATA Target/Backplane for $30

To mount this in the DAS I just took a half height pci bracket that came with the card and bent the tab back, drilled two holes and I was in business. I’ll post the final specs in the gallery.

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I’m thinking of taking a 4-bay CD-ROM copier I found at Goodwill and making it a DAS unit. It won’t look very cool in it’s boomer 90’s look but whatever…

Is it advisable to run one of these LSI cards off a regular windows desktop? Otherwise I’ll end up having to build a Unraid server as well.

This is a newer version of what I have

My experience with windows and lsi cards is you have to make sure windows will recognize it and there are drivers if you want to take advantage of any features of the card other than hba pass through of the drives. You will need to do software raid per se so something like windows storage spaces (which has its own issues). The lsi cards are easier to use if you buy them flashed to IT mode.

That should be a 5-bay case, once you remove the 4 burners you can remove the controller from the top slot.


This box was a 9 bay dvd burner case, now fitted with 3 x 5in3 cages.

I would stick with the 8-bay mini das chasis if you can get a hold of one, and avoid the big dense box with hot swap bays.

That looks pretty good and 15 bays. Maybe you can share some more pics in the completed build section.

I am pretty sure that I posted a few in the #DAS channel on discord way back when. Maybe 2 years ago now. There is a Intel sas expander inside and a dual mini-sas connector on the back. At the time I was connected to a LSI 9200 8-E.

It looks good, all shiny and works well. My gripe would be the overall cost and perhaps noise/heat, but there really isn’t much more I could do with this setup. I like the smaller 8 bay mini with larger drives much better.

Has anyone else been able to find more of these cases? I haven’t seen anymore on ebay.

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Nope, and the seller basically told me to pound sand when I asked about them.

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This SANS DIGITAL TowerRAID looks awfully similar…

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2FSANS-DIGITAL-TowerRAID-TR8X-JBOD-8-3-5-Drive-Bays-2-SAS-SATA-JBOD-Enclosure%2F324155145381%3Fhash%3Ditem4b7926fca5%3Ag%3AVeMAAOSwuxZek6hp&campid=5338535236&toolid=20008

Well that’s nice of them lol

I thought it looked like a Sans Digital box too! It is probably some sort of spillage as in fell of the truck.

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Still waiting on some parts to come in but I’ve got this built and waiting on the lower portion to come in which will house some 2.5 inch drives

I took it to mean it took up (5) 5.25" bays but it only takes up 3 so I ended up ordering this which I believe will work on ok.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016O036FK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Also have some cheap fans coming…I can already tell running 5 hdd’s in that banggood cage is gonna produce some heat.

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That cage fits 120mm fans in the front…

Yeah I got it…the fan I have on top right now is 135mm. It’s from a old power supply so I guess that’s the reason for it being a odd ball size.

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If there’s any Aussies here I recommend Amazon for the Mini SAS cable. I ordered two from China and they took forever. Orered from CableDeconn on Amazon AU and it came within 3 days!

https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07M8PTFZM/ref=cfb_at_prodpg