Adaptec 6805Q 2270700-R User Manual

Chapter 5: Installing the Controller and Disk Drives

●

50

Connecting Disk Drives to Your Controllers

You can connect SAS disk drives, SATA disk drives, and SATA and SAS Solid State Drives 
(SSDs) to your Adaptec RAID controller. (See 

www.adaptec.com/compatibility

 for a list of 

compatible drives.) There are no jumpers or switches to set before installation.

If you plan to build a bootable array, ensure you install at least the minimum number disk 
drives required to support the RAID level you want. See 

 for more information.

Note: 

Although you can connect both SAS and SATA disk drives to your SAS controller, we 

recommend that you not combine SAS and SATA disk drives within the same array or logical 
drive. See 

 for more information.

You have two connection options:

●

To connect directly to the controller, see the following section.

●

To connect to a backplane, see 

.

To connect Solid State Drives to your controller, see 

.

Connecting Drives Directly to the Controller

In a direct-attach connection, SAS or SATA disk drives are connected directly to a SAS card 
with SAS cables. The number of direct-attached disk drives is limited to four per internal SAS 
connector. (For more information about direct-attach connections, see 

.)

1

Install your internal SAS or SATA disk drives, following the instructions in your system’s 
documentation. 

2

Use internal SAS or mini-SAS cables to attach the disk drives to the controller, as shown in 
the following example. 

Note: 

SAS fan-out cables are also available with an additional sideband (SFF-8448) cable 

that caries SGPIO signals for enclosure management. This additional sideband cable is not 
used with direct-attached disk drives.

SAS/SATA 
disk drives

Single-port connector

internal x4 mini-SAS connectors

mini-SAS to SATA fan-out cable