N54L Questions from a Newbie!

[kurtis5561]

Hi Everyone

 

Firstly this place is amazing! I'm glad to have finally plucked the courage up to post.

 

I purchased an N54L a few years back and it had an SSD installed as the primary boot device where the CD/DVD should go. I've put 4 extra HDDs in so I am maxed out on that front. I've been using Windows server on it.

 

Now I've recently got given two SAS drives. I've seen a StarTech enclosure. Now if I was to buy a SATA hub and a esata/sata cable can I plug in to the Esata cable? Will it all work or do I need to do some config. Not scared to do configuration. Just need someone to point me in the right direction please? Failing that Does anyone know on the sata enclosures if I buy a load of SATA to USB would it work that way?

 

Also. Sorry for all the questions. I read these servers can take 16gb is that correct? Is there any specific ram sticks to look out for?  

 

Thanks for reading and answering

Stephen

[schoondoggy]

SAS drives will not connect to a SATA controller. You will need a SAS controller to connect SAS drive to the server. If you are not using hardware RAID you could get a LSI based SAS HBA and connect to an external SAS enclosure. External SAS enclosures are expensive.

LSI IBM SAS 9212-4i4e 6Gb SAS Controller Card HBA Card Internal External IT Mode | eBay

SilverStone TS421S INTRODUCTION (silverstonetek.com)

You could also look at doing something like this:

ICY DOCK internal turned external - Hard Drive's, SSD's, Controllers - RESET Forums (homeservershow.com)

[kurtis5561]

Thank you for your reply.

 

The StarTech Dock is this one https://www.startech.com/en-gb/hdd/hsb4satsasba

 

That has SATA out. I was going to get a SATA hub to cover all the out connections then connect it to the ESATA port. Hope I'm making sense.