this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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Honestly you bought the wrong card for internal SAS hard drives. You can make it work with some adapters but it is going to get messy.
As you have discovered the SFF-8088 port is on the back of the card for connecting an external box of drives. You can use an SFF-8088 to 4X SATA cable like this and loop the cable from outside your case back inside.
https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-SFF-8088-Female-Controller-Backplane/dp/B013G4EX9K/
But this won't work with your SAS hard drive. That cable is for SATA hard drives and SAS drives have an extra bit of plastic to prevent connecting a SATA cable.
https://imgur.com/a/9zieTy8
You can use this SFF-8088 to SAS cable and loop it from the back of your case to the inside but you see it requires a bunch of Molex connectors to provide power for the drives. If you had that many free Molex connectors then buy this cable.
https://www.amazon.com/Mini-SAS-SFF-8088-SFF-8482-Power-Cable/dp/B08NGJ7F5K
What you really should have bought is an LSI SAS HBA "8i" or "16i" card that have SFF-8087 ports designed for internal use. Then you can use this cable with connectors to the SAS data ports on the hard drive and then uses SATA power connectors to power the SAS hard drives.
https://www.amazon.com/AdcAudx-Mini-SAS-SAS-Cable-Internal-SATA-Power/dp/B09Q33VV5V/
You could get a bracket like this and an 8088 to 8088 cable to connect outside your computer and then it would effectively give you an SFF-8087 port. Then you could use either of the SFF-8087 to 4X SATA or 4X SAS cables.
https://www.amazon.com/CableDeconn-SFF-8088-SFF-8087-Adapter-Bracket/dp/B00PRXOQFA/
https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-External-26pin-SFF-8088-Cable/dp/B013G4F3A8/
All of the cables above are normal forward breakout cables. When you read the manual and it says that the 4 internal SATA ports support SAS drives it is technically true but how do you connect them? The people who would use that feature are usually connecting to a SAS backplane with an SFF-8087 or other type of SAS port. So they would use a reverse breakout cable but you don't have a backplane so forget about that.
Many thanks - this is awesome! Very much appreciate the time you invested. Yep, I messed up... Thanks for the help and I am learning.
The bracket you suggested looks like the cleanest solution. I am on a tight budget right now though and I would need that plus the 8088 to 8088 cable and the internal cable.
The 8088 cable with molex makes me cringe, but I guess it will get me out of a hole for now. I only have one SAS drive so I guess its manageable.
Out of curiosity what sort of devices would the SFF-8088 normally connect to - a drive enclosure of some sort?