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I have a "SilverStone ECS04 PCIe to Mini-SAS SFF-8087 Expansion Card" which has 2 mini-SAS SFF-8087 ports - I purchased a SilverStone CPS03 Mini SFF-8087 to SAS/SATA with Sideband Cable which gives me 4 SATA connectors and I have connected two SATA drives to it - this works fine , with no drivers , just a partition and mounting of the new drives.

What I want to do is (for backups) connect a further SATA drive to it in a hotswap bay like IcyDock 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Hot-Swap Mobile Rack for 5.25" Device Bay

I have found one on ebay (it says model MB671IK-B ) but it warns that I must have a SAS capable card to detect the SAS drives and also shows the box with the SAS ticked.

Ebay Screen shot) -

The manufacturer web site says it is discontinue BUT has two SATA connectors on the back enter image description here

I believe I do have such a SAS capable card - however as I have a SATA cable with this intermediate HDD enclosure - will this work? Or is there a way to make SATA drives with cables or something work with the referenced HDD enclosure? .

Essentially I don't understand why the enclosure says SAS but has 2 SATA connectors. Perhaps it means the internal connectors must be SAS? - or am I just worrying about SAS when as I have no SAS drives this will work

The place I normally buy my drives from does not have SAS drives, the system is Ubuntu , I doubt anything else affects this - but ask and I can update this

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I had almost the same issue with IcyDock MB996SP-6SB (specs says it accepts sas/sata drives; and I have a sas controller) however I never got it working with SAS drives; but all worked well with SATA drives. I used mini sas 8087 to 4 sas connectors forward breakout cable as enclosure requires sata cable (which is problem for SAS drives).

Essentially I don't understand why the enclosure says SAS but has 2 SATA connectors.

I agree it's misleading and limiting your cabling options. It would be better if IcyDock would have an optional SFF-8087 connector to simplify interoperability with SAS controllers.

Here is a clarification about cables from TomsHardware, it helped me in troubleshooting this issue.

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  • I accepted as it does answer - although I think links are not meant to be left in answers - I think that links says "...it [is] possible to attach a SAS drive to a SATA controller using the continuous connector, but you cannot hook up a SAS hard drive to a SATA controller using the SATA connector"
    – Ross
    Commented Mar 27, 2018 at 23:18
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    Hi Ross, I think my answer is sufficient, but since I am not authority I provided him a link to confirm what I say. Indeed summary should have been done; and thank you for adding clarity to this answer. (this was very irritating issue for me when I had it, i hope answer helps someone)
    – Peter
    Commented Mar 28, 2018 at 16:17

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