Additional SATA drives on Supermicro X10SL7-F

[theaddies]

I have 6 2 TB SATA drives running on my FreeNAS server. I have been struggling with the reliability of USB boot drives and I broke down and bought 2 SATA SSD drives thinking that I could install them in a mirrored configuration. I didn't realize the additional 8 connections on the motherboard are SAS and not SATA. Can I use SATA drives on the SAS connectors? The SATA connector fits. If so, in order to boot from the drives the only drives visible in the bios appears to be the 6 SATA drives. Could I simply move some of my ZFS data drives to the SAS connectors and put the SSDs on the SATA connections? Sorry for the awkward question. SAS is something new to me. Many thanks in advance for a response.

 

[Jailer]

Can I use SATA drives on the SAS connectors?

You sure can. Just make sure the controller is flashed with the latest IT firmware.

Could I simply move some of my ZFS data drives to the SAS connectors and put the SSDs on the SATA connections?

Again yes you can. I run all 6 of my data drives off the SAS controller in my server.

 

[Chris Moore]

I think it's best to keep the data drives on the SAS controller and have the boot drives on SATA.. I have a add in SAS controller, and that's the way I do it.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[theaddies]

Many thanks guys. I did it and it works great.