[ILUG] When is SATA SAS?, was ITX advice

[Michael Watterson]

paul at clubi.ie wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Sep 2007, Michael Watterson wrote:
>
>> SAS is a different beast from ordinary Consumer SATA,
>
> It's not. Again, SAS *is* the SATA phy, except the high-level commands 
> are SCSI, not SATA.
>
>> A cheap SATA PIDE adaptor won't give you SAS.
>
> "SATA PIDE"???? What are you talking about.
About 20 euro buys an adaptor for SATA motherboard/cable to Parallel IDE.

£25 in Maplin
http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?ModuleNo=36036&doy=11m9

I've never tried one, maybe they are snake oil and don't work. But I 
suspect it doesn't translate SCSI commands to IDE commands.
Quote from the usual unreliable source:
If AHCI is not enabled by the motherboard and chipset, SATA controllers 
typically operate in "IDE emulation" mode which does not allow features 
of devices to be accessed that are not supported by the ATA/IDE 
standard. Windows device drivers that are labeled as SATA are usually 
running in IDE emulation mode unless they explicitly state that they are 
AHCI


So unless you do extra stuff  (which needs to be Mobo, drive and OS 
supported) SATA is just a cable width saving. It's my understanding that 
a SAS controller may operate a regular SATA drive (no doubt by IDE 
commands), but that a typical SATA port on a motherboard will not have a 
clue what to do with a real SAS drive.