Worn out cables...

[rvassar]

I've been fighting a problem with my LSI SAS card. If I do any kind of maintenance I have trouble getting all the drives back in the pools. It seems to be cable specific, in that one mini SAS breakout cable is apparently entirely unaffected, but the other, servicing the lower half of my drive bay, has a couple plugs that are now entirely unusable. Since my build is in a "gamer" case, my drives mount length-wise across the width of the case (right behind a couple 120mm fans), placing the SATA plug on the left side against the removable side panel. I suspect this may make for a cable strain issue for several positions in the lower portion of the drive bay, with a sharp 90 degree bend. For now, I've patched a couple drives to unused MB SATA II ports. The connection speed is lower, but I'm not running SSD's, not really noticeable. I believe the spec on SATA only rates the plugs for 50 insert/remove events.

Can anyone recommend a new production SAS mini to SATA breakout cable for a LSI SAS2008 style card, that has a 90 degree locking SATA plug at the end? Preferably in a 45cm/18in length?

 

[rvassar]

For posterity...

I went with Cable Deconn, with the 90 deg locking ends.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XBE4DGO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

So far so good, and they appear to be constructed much like modern 12gb SAS cables. I have a problematic Toshiba (@Chris Moore did warn me...) back in a RAIDZ pool. The drive has always run well, but did not play well with the LSI adapter (flashed Dell H310), and had to connect to the MB ports. So at least one of my problems was the cables...

But my 8Tb shucked Easystore drives are still a bit of trouble. I thought I might be hitting the limit of my power supply. But swapping it for a 850 watt unit didn't help. The only clue I have is they don't like to be on the same line. Specifically, if they are adjacent on the power cable, one of them drops out of the pool. I have two shucked 8Tb Easystore's in a 2 vdev mirror pool. One appears to be a real WD Red, the other appears to be an HGST He drive. I'm thinking any expansion of this pool is going to need to be an actual boxed Red / IronWolf. They may be on to us! :)