Thinking about ditching my Dell T330 in favor of a 10" mini rack setup with two mini PCs to cut down on noise and improve portability. I have eight 8TB HDDs on hand, seven SAS and one SATA, all linked to a Supermicro AOC-S3008L-L8i HBA using SFF-8463 ports right now.
I've come across some 3D printed hot swap bay designs that require a backplane with SATA connections for the hot swap feature. I'm eyeing SFF-8482 to SATA adapters as a potential fix, but I'm unsure if they'll play nice with SAS drives since compatibility can be tricky.
My rough plan involves using those adapters, grabbing some SFF-8643 breakout cables, and powering everything with a Flex ATX PSU. I've checked out backplanes in Jonsbo cases that handle SAS drives internally but only show SATA on the outside.
Is this setup actually viable? What alternatives have folks tried, like dedicated SAS backplanes or different cabling options? Any tips on avoiding common pitfalls with power or heat in compact builds? Would love to hear about your experiences and what works best in similar homelab scenarios.
