Cost of SAS vs SATA Hard Drives | Shopping with Art of Server on eBay!!

[@squelchedotter]

When doing comparisons like this, I really like using the "show only completed items" option, that shows what price something tends to go in completed auctions.

[@ArtofServer]

That's a good point if I'm looking at auction type listings. I find that for used server hardware, historical pricing doesn't always correlate to current pricing. Prices tend to fluctuate based on supply, more so than historical trend. I was trying to show what someone could actually buy at the time the video was being made. Nonetheless, historical data can also be useful, so it is a good point to check on that as well.

[@cfgdr3]

When showing completed, the listings in GREEN sold, whereas the black price didn't sell. You can also sort them by "most recent" in order to see what the current trend is. I usually sort by low to high price, then resort them to most recent. That give me a fairly accurate asking price when selling my items, or when giving a "best offer" to a seller.

[@ArtofServer]

@@cfgdr3 thanks for the tip

[@seanm9378]

Just bought 7 2tb sas drives, reformatted to 512b, used seatools to check them out.... wow, half warranty hours (2.4Y) outta 5! So basically they have not been used a whole lot. Even writes are at avg 60tbw’s! Pretty happy. Thanks for your great vids and help!

[@ArtofServer]

Thanks for sharing

[@exshenanigan2333]

may I ask why did you reformatted them to 512b? I have 4 2TB SAS in my system and I'm trying to understand if that's something I'd benefit doing from.

[@marty5300]

I have been using used sas drives for 2+ years now on my omv nas.. zero problems. Some are dated 2012 and they're still going. Very few stop/starts, some only had like 17 when I got them. I run 8x3tb HGST drives, and they've been great. At $25 each, if one or 4 die, who cares they were cheap as hell. Really no complaints about buying used drives. if you stick to the brands/models that backblaze has tracked over the years, you've got a pretty good chance of not experiencing any failures.

[@ikkuranus]

I took advantage of those 14TB sas drives you linked in a post back in march and they have been great so far.

[@ArtofServer]

Awesome! glad to hear it!!!

[@dusterl1472]

Hah! This video makes me feel so vindicated! I've been ashamed of my used SAS drive purchasing habit... Watching this video was like listening to my own head! Everything from 8TB drives to HGST and Hitachi! Everything is so true. I was worried about using refurb drives, but $120 8TB SAS just couldn't be beat even remotely close with anything new. Maybe someday I'll get new, but I kind of doubt it. I've never had a SAS drive fail on me since I started in 2016/17. Though I've yet to work up the courage to get used SSDs...

[@ArtofServer]

Glad to know I'm not alone! :-) Thanks for watching!

[@chrismoore9997]

Also watch out for SATA drives being SMR drives which are no good for ZFS or probably any RAID technology.

[@ArtofServer]

Very good point Chris. Thanks for mentioning that!

[@keeperofthegood]

Hello there, just getting into SAS and I ... find you have possibly answered my questions across several videos! I will give those a watch and go from what I learn :)

[@ArtofServer]

Glad to hear these videos are helpful to you! Thanks for watching!

[@Firebirdgm2000]

Thank you for the content, I have also purchased 10 gig cards from your ebay listings.

[@ArtofServer]

Thank you! And thank you for your support by shopping at my store! :-)

[@sekritskworl-sekrit_studios]

GREAT VIDEO!!! I'd love to know more about the SAS-3 capabilities for storage

[@GoHardDrive-b9f]

I dont use sas not because of cost, but mainly because you usally need more equipment to run them in a home pc, compared to just plugging into a free Sata port. But i do see them being pretty useful for other applications like backing up to tape for example.

[@GoHardDrive-b9f]

Also Becuase most people have Sata, ofc Sata would be more costly.

[@ArtofServer]

For the consumer PC world, it's true that SATA is more convenient. But a lot of folks are also building home NAS setups and using HBA SAS controllers, which allows SAS drives. Most of my audience are building home NAS and hypervisors.

[@GoHardDrive-b9f]

@@ArtofServer im just highlighting the convience factor of not doing any extra work. i heard you also needed to flash the bios on some hba cards.

[@AZTrucker]

You definitely need to do another one of these for 2024.

[@ArtofServer]

Thanks for the suggestion! I feel like I need to refresh several of my videos...

[@donalale]

@@ArtofServer All of your buyer's guides are very helpful!

[@cinemaipswich4636]

I have 8 SATA drives on my 6G raid/HBA/IT storage card. They are RED 56oo RPM drives, the slowest you can get. When you add up the speed of them 100MB/sec - 8Gbit/sec, this is more than the controller card. Considering my 10GbE card from my server to my workstation, I suffer no lag or buffering, and can edit from server.

[@jllerk]

Such an enormously helpful advice! Thanks so much man !!

[@ArtofServer]

Happy to help!

[@kw6182]

Great video! Keep 'em coming!

[@ArtofServer]

Thanks! Will do!

[@lpseem3770]

Thank You, that in a good suggestions. I never buy a drive from auction with a single drive. Not only it adds up shipping cost, but leaves me (and a seller) with nothing if a drive turn out as bad during badblocks write checks, or just making werid noises. Sure I can get a refund, but I still have to buy a hard drive. Another problem is with the branding. I have 4 Hitachi disks, but smart is showing Netapp brand as well. They're working fine, so I ordered 5 more. It turnes out, the are different only by single revision number and a perc controller is totally not recognizing them. The more cheaper Perc 6i can see them, but after initialize it shows tham as 0 megabytes in size. I'm guessing, that I have to change firmware for them with some Dell software, but they're so old and I found only an old forum thread with reported success. Well, lessons learned I suppose.

[@johnmadsen37]

I got 12 8tb sas 12/g 3-4 years old from a datacneter dump. 95 -115 each. HGST of course and only. Then I needed a good sas card. Then cabling. I run raid 6. 48tb in this machine. I can expand if I want to whatever. The card will make it seem less. If you like expanding and configuring or hardware raid because you’re not a child running software raid, then it’s very very good. There is a reason data centers use them. People can argue whatever they want. It’s usually because they can’t afford it so they justify to stupidity. But they are affordable. And compared to the 4 sata drives inshucked and one 8tb was bad brand freaking new, .... I made the switch. I’ll never go back. And these will last a decade so I’m not worried about it. 8tb is the sweet spot for reliability and price. Never use shingled trash. It’s just another inferior software trick.

[@ArtofServer]

Thanks for sharing!

[@d2cbro]

"not a child" ok

[@whatevah666]

The pickings outside of US seem to be pretty slim unfortunally, heavy shipment costs from there + import taxes as well. But if you can find some stuff inside your unnion/country go for it! :D

[@ArtofServer]

yeah, every market is going to be different depending on local availablility.

[@thegorn]

I recently bought 9 6TB SAS drives off eBay. 2 died with unrecoverable errors within the first couple of weeks. Another 5 are running errors and I’ll replace them. Basically got 2 good ones out of 9. They are all HGST. Build date of 2017 but “new old stock”. I think they got hacked to reset all the runtime data. I love Seagate - have had good experiences with them.

[@tigerkites]

Very true, HDD does wear out. Which makes buying used drives pretty risky. I'd personally buy new drives and pay a bit more for HDD. And I most get larger drives because smaller ones even cheaper to purchase, but takes up server HDD slots, cabling, and power which all will cost more.

[@artlessknave]

it also depends on if you get nearline sas drives (SATA quality spindle and arm with no dual path but a SAS connector) or actual sas drives (SAS quality spindle and arm with dual path)

[@Felix-ve9hs]

in germany you unfortinally only get great prices on 2TB and 3TB SAS Drives (25-40€) and "lot" deals are only available from the US with $400 - $800 for shipping :(

[@TiagoJoaoSilva]

Yep, they don't know how easy they have it in the USA. Guys like Craft Computing make videos about cheap Chenbro and Supermicro servers and then I go to eBay.de looking for the same kind of deals I always come back feeling sticker shock.

[@SirHackaL0t.]

Your choice of manufacturers is the same as mine other than I treat WD the same as Seagate. So many failures over the years. It’s difficult to know when a WD drive is actually a HGST drive.

[@ArtofServer]

Well, WD owns HGST now. Most of the higher end WD product line is now just WD branded HGST products. WD realized HGST had superior quality I think...

[@SirHackaL0t.]

@@ArtofServer What I don't understand is why so many people push Seagate and WD over the years. Backblaze has great stats on hard drive failures which they update every 3 months.

[@ArtofServer]

Yeah, I look at the backblaze data too. HGST always does well in their data. Seagate has good sales and marketing or something, they've landed a lot of contracts to be provider for a lot of server brands.

[@curmudgeoniii9762]

Question: have Dell Precision 5600 .. would like to turn into True NAS scale .... if I purchase a LSI card... can that work ... or what do I need? If you will.

[@ArtofServer]

I recommend you watch these 2 videos for starters: kzbin.info/www/bejne/noXFfK2Hj9BlZ9k kzbin.info/www/bejne/hYiXYmx-rLpqqck

[@farawaythrower]

Ill actually be buying six 600GB 15k sas drives to put in my personal system soon, probably in raid 50. It's definitely impractical but it's just so cool, and fun.

[@ArtofServer]

Considering what they cost these days, if you're having fun and learning, it's probably worth it! :-)

[@farawaythrower]

@@ArtofServer exactly, i'm looking forward to messing around with it

[@oso2k]

What's your opinion of the SAS 2.5" SSD & HDD eBay market vs. consumer SATA 2.5" SSD & HDD?

[@ArtofServer]

The 2.5" HDD market I think is a bit pointless. On the consumer end, there are very old laptop 2.5" HDDs or on the enterprise end there are small capacity (~2TB) HDDs or really crappy SMR 2.5" HDDs. None of those things are really desirable. I would just stay away from 2.5" HDDs in general. If you need large storage, just use 3.5" or large SSDs if you can afford it. With regards to 2.5" SSD market however, I think there are a lot of great enterprise SAS *and* SATA options. Intel has a great line up of enterprise grade SATA SSDs. And there are lot of enterprise grade SAS SSDs too. The consumer side 2.5" SSDs are not bad too, but usually less endurance, and lacking data protection features like PLP.

[@oso2k]

@@ArtofServer I agree with you about the capacity/perf limitations of 2.5" HDDs. I have several empty disk shelves (2x Dell SC200 and 1x SC220 racked in my homelab) at the moment and I've been considering using 2.5" SSDs for TrueNAS CORE ZILs and L2ARCs for the 3.5" HDD pools. Also wondering about using multiple SSDs for ZILs & L2ARCs and good practices to follow there, like SSD vs NVME, mirrored vs. striped, RAM to L2ARC/ZIL to HDD ratios.

[@studentinfomovie]

Great video. Couple of other things I take into consideration: - Spinning rust is getting out of fashion and maybe the single most important criteria that you should've included in your table is $/TB. That gives a lot more perspective how much beter value you get 3-6TB HDD vs SSD vs NVMe vs (new) 12TB+HDD. - I often find that storage requirements for "hot" or often used data are small enough to fit into some really fast storage. HDDs are being used more and more just for backups or non-essential content. So reliability can be even less important to $/space (think like 3rd-level of backup where it might make sense using even RAID0). - SAS interface is quite a bit more rare on casual computers and you can easily be stuck with a wrong cable in hand. So if you are open to using SAS, a SAS backplane or a used server (like Dell R720) should be on the list, too. Buying a bunch of adapters will probably eliminate all price-difference if you do not prepare for non-conventional interfaces and equipment. Like ie U.2 NVMe might be cheaper than AiC/PCie, but some extra cable will quickly take $30-50. - I like keywords like "enterprise, 24/7..." even used much more than "green, consumer, blue, deskstar..." Not for everything but in my experience for reliability, "used" enterprise, SAS, eMLC... from eBay will beat "new" from BestBuy in price, longetivity, troubleshootings and performance very often. - Add to this that multiple drives will likely be in some RAID, behind some controller or ZFS, with more vibrations in multi-drive enclosures... It makes even more sense to go for things made with this kind of usage patterns in mind. - buying "lots" of HDD often means you are buying from some big company that has the resources so keep those drives in good condition, keep them cool... and have replacements at hand during their usage. Bad drives are already in trash and they do not risk giving them away easily due to data-protection, GDPR... I am afraid that due to this concerns CEOs will more and more often order destructing them evenafter being totally wiped out than letting them being sold on a second hand market. The risk is really, really high for them. Big companies often do not sell used drives cause they are bad, but because they are out of warranty, the risk of failure goes from 0.00001% > 0.015% and they have their budgets in place for regular purchases, replacements... (some purchase manager can not get his % if new orders do not happen :-) ) It makes a lot of sense to target "lots" as long as you need 5+ drives. From personal experience: - I've bought a lot of 20 HDDs 2-3y ago from eBay, a UK company, HGST, 3TB, though just SATA... None has died so far with pretty much 24/7 action. - Some people will prefer Seagate to HGST as they are much more quiet. I know when my ZFS pool in workstation on my desk is writing or not having data cached every single time. :-)

[@JanekWerbinski]

I have bought 18 HGST 3 TB in 2019. No problems. Seagate is dead for me.

[@jay_tuckey]

Great video! Love the ebay search tips. Have you considered posting your videos also on LBRY?

[@ArtofServer]

Not yet! Thanks for watching!

[@GourmetSaint]

I just had a thought, the trend for major corporations and now SMEs to move from in-house hosting to cloud services will reduce server and storage sales (except for the major cloud providers). Does this mean we will start seeing a lower supply of data centre seconds for our home labs in the future?

[@ArtofServer]

No, I don't think so. If businesses migrate to using public cloud services, the storage just moved to the cloud providers. Either way, someone is buying storage and either way, that storage will age out and be decommissioned. Cloud isn't some magical thing, it's just someone else's servers you pay for indirectly.

[@PeterBatah]

I thouroughly enjoyed this YT presentation. It was very insightful. I have a technical question if I may. I am having trouble getting it answered elsewhere and was hoping that you could help. I did come across a decent deal on this drive (HPE 8TB 791394-002 3.5" SAS 12Gb/s 7200RPM MB8000JEQVA HUH728080AL5204) but am not sure if it is compatible with my Z820. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Peter

[@ArtofServer]

glad you enjoyed it. for ease of compatibility, I would avoid anything that has custom firmware. it might be possible to use them a generic sense, but sometimes they can present issues too. if you have time to tinker, and don't mind the risk, you can certainly try them out. but if you just want something that will work and you don't have time to mess around with it, get non-OEM drives with regular firmware.

[@PeterBatah]

Much appreciated as always. @@ArtofServer

[@PeterBatah]

Custom firmware? Now you have we worried. Especially, given the fact that I have already bought and received two of those drives. Yeah! I'm impulsive that way. 🤭@@ArtofServer

[@GunnerRA155]

**WARNING -- ZOMBIE SERVER QUESTION!!** I have an old R710 with a RAID 5 array on an H700, and 2 SSD's as my OS drives connected to the sata ports on the mobo. Can I reinstall my OS without destroying the RAID?

[@andreikolozsvari]

The SSDs are in a separate RAID or are included in the RAID 5? The H700 card has it's original IR firmware or it was flashed with IT firmware?

[@GunnerRA155]

@@andreikolozsvari H700 has its original IR firmware. The SSDs are not in a RAID, just used as separate drives - one as OS and the other as an extra drive. The RAID I want to keep is the 18TB of 6x 4TB drives on the H700. Windows install should see the 18TB array as a separate drive?

[@andreikolozsvari]

@@GunnerRA155 Then it's OK to reinstall the OS. The RAID volume is controlled by the H700 card and is seen as as single volume by the OS.

[@alphabanks]

You can get great prices on SAS drives the problem is the noise and heat that they produce. Yes, the drives are better now but if you don't have a dedicated area such as a basement or a home server room I would go with SATA. Now in the data center, it does not matter.

[@ArtofServer]

I have never found SAS drives to be more noisy than SATA drives at the same RPM. Yes, if you are comparing 15K RPM SAS drives to 7200 RPM SATA, then those observations are true.

[@jonathanbuzzard1376]

If you are building a server then "Enterprise" rated SATA drives are the only thing you should be considering and at that point the SATA/SAS price differential is much lower. I would note that IMHO NAS rated drives are desktop junk don't go there.

[@yahyasajid5113]

Systemsupplieslimited on eBay sell them really cheap, auction is where it's at for dirt cheap storage, 30tb under £180

[@ArtofServer]

very true. use a sniping tool on auctions and you can get much better pricing. i just wanted to show what was actually available as Buy-It-Now.

[@Akbar_Friendly_in_Cherno]

Your desktop is so clean.

[@ArtofServer]

That's because it's my dedicated desktop VM for recording videos. I don't do anything other than record videos in that VM. My daily desktop is much less organized... sadly. :-(

[@jk-mm5to]

Given that I have 12 bays to fill, I purchased NEW hgst 3tb on ebay for $40 each.

[@ArtofServer]

That's not a bad deal. Were they SAS or SATA?

[@jk-mm5to]

@@ArtofServer hus724030ala640

[@GourmetSaint]

@@jk-mm5to ie SATA

[@Trooper_Ish]

Just think... One day, U.2/NVMe will also be comparable to spinning rust. (not nearly soon enough though) but might not be till they have dodecahedronal level cells, with 100P/E cycles, and 2 year warranties from new... /s

[@SyberPrepper]

Thanks for the video. Very informative! Probably a dumb question but are the SAS controllers PCI-e 4? Are they x8 or x16? I have a workstation motherboard with only a few PCI-e slots.

[@ArtofServer]

There are variety of SAS controllers, from x4, x8, x16. See my other video "Comparing HBA SAS controllers"

[@SyberPrepper]

@@ArtofServer Great. Will do. Thanks.

[@maxmuller2878]

I actually just bought a 10tb sata hdd and just paid 110€

[@ArtofServer]

Nice deal! Where did you buy it from?

[@maxmuller2878]

I bought it from a private seller on a site which is like the German Craigslist, he just used it for half a year for manual backups

[@DenzNoble]

Can this sas drives used on a Desktop motherboard with a sas pcie controller?

[@ArtofServer]

Sure. As long as you have a SAS controller! It's what I use for my desktop workstation machines.

[@DenzNoble]

@@ArtofServer Nice, thank you!

[@UnkyjoesPlayhouse]

very informative :)

[@ArtofServer]

Thanks @Unkyjoe's Playhouse ! BTW, did you get my message?

[@squelchedotter]

If there's one thing I'm not willing to go second hand on, it's definitely hard drives. Yeah, they can be reliable, but who knows what they've done to your specific drives? For all you know they could have been mounted with one screw in the back of a van. Unless you specifically know the previous owner, it's just not worth the risk, IMO, even with backups and RAID.

[@ArtofServer]

There was a time I shared the same opinion. However, after further thought, my storage strategy is already protected by other mechanisms; redundancy/raid in ZFS, snapshots, local backups, off-site backups, etc. Plus, I fully test all the 2nd hand HDDs I use just like I would brand new HDDs - if they pass testing, I don't have an issue using them with real data. I'm also not concerned if I have HDD failures.

[@leexgx]

RAID6 and monitor smart, ideally have something to email you when hdd Below 99% health, if it's windows hdd sentinel can do that My 6 Bay nas is 6x6tb 6-5 year old wd re disks and a slower 4 bay backup 4x8gb 4-3 years old seagate nas hdds (white label before they changed to ironwolf brand) both in RAID6 and readynas, so btrfs error detection and correction email reports when disk is developing problems

[@jonathanbuzzard1376]

You should try it sometime. Thing is SAS drives are highly likely to have lived a life cosseted in a data centre and are extremely unlikely to have been mounted with one screw in the back of a van. Now if it is a SATA drive who knows, but enterprise SAS drives live in air conditioned rooms in not vans.

[@BriceBentler]

Really helpful

[@ArtofServer]

Glad it helped

[@liudas000]

Which is better for speed: SAS 7.2k or SATA SSD?

[@ArtofServer]

SSD is always faster.

[@frankwalder3608]

The SAS/SATA debate is not the issue. The high price of SSDs are the consideration. You didn’t illustrate SSD SAS drives, especially 2.5”.

[@ArtofServer]

That's a totally different subject.

[@chrismoore9997]

I have 40 x 4TB drives I could sell you for $40 each. They are Western Digital SAS drives.

[@ArtofServer]

That's a nice deal... But I need to downsize.

[@yahyasajid5113]

Isn't that a bad deal? 3tb in bulk go for £14-20 each Inc shipping, doubt 4tb should warrant the jump up in price

[@saswatasarkar7434]

Hey man, why dont you ship to india?

[@ArtofServer]

India doesn't appear to be in eBay global shipping list of countries. Sorry...

[@AssassinSmiles]

Linus's video for those interested: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a3KnoYaDqaqErrs

[@GourmetSaint]

I purchased 4 x SAS SSDs (used) for caching and log under zfs. They were cheap and were all SLC. Much better than what you get with consumer SATA SSDs.

[@dusterl1472]

What sort of enterprise SSDs? I've been getting used HDDs for a bit but the limited lifespan of SSDs always made me wary...

[@GourmetSaint]

@@dusterl1472 200Gb Dell branded Pliant LB206M.

[@yahyasajid5113]

@@GourmetSaint how much did you get them for since new 240gb ssd's go for only £20

[@GourmetSaint]

@@yahyasajid5113 I doubt you would get new SLC SAS SSDs that cheap. Maybe MLC SATA? I paid about AUD$80.00 for some pulled from an ex-corporate server.

[@yahyasajid5113]

@@GourmetSaint yeah the ones I'm on about are regular dram less SATA ones, aren't both capped by SATA 3 speeds anyway unless they're SAS 2 12gb/s, how fast are those sas ones and how many hours did they have on them

[@GEORGE-jf2vz]

Yes, Seagate sucks. I used to be subscribed to 'Linus Tech' but unsubscribed when he started throwing around equipment that was 3 years old. Very unprofessional. Also, on a very large drive if it goes bad it will take the server a long time to rebuild a 12 TB drive compared to a 2 TB drive. Depends if you can run the chance of another drive failing in the time it takes to rebuild the first one.

[@ArtofServer]

That's a good point about rebuild times. The speed of HDDs haven't scaled up with capacity. The larger capacity drives definitely take longer to rebuild if you have a lot of data on them (ZFS resilver only rebuild blocks with actual data, not the empty blocks), and ALSO takes a longer time to perform burn-in testing!

[@DanielTekmyster]

Stop giving away all the secrets… how else will I be able to afford more reliable faster less expensive disks! 😬

[@ArtofServer]

sharing is caring? LOL

[@ГеоргийТрубецкой-й8й]

Just a type of interface, price and capacity? Really? There is too many parameters. So, each case is individual.