Ultium 1760 SAS Cable

[Lajaycee]

Hi, I'm a little new here, so I hope my question is not too simple - LOL

I have an HP Ultium 1760 tape drive - the rear connector on the drive is considered mini-SAS (8088).  I would like to connect the tape drive to a server, but there is no mini-SAS connector on the server - it does however, have an HD Mini-SAS (8644) connector (actually two of them).

I know such cables exist and actually bought 1 - problem is it will not work - server does not recognize the drive.  Just to be sure, I connected the drive to another server that does have a mini-SAS (8088) connector and the drive is functional.

So my question is, does the HP Ultium 1760 tape drive support such a connection?  If yes, does anyone know of a specific source to order one?

[Curtis_Ballard]

Yes HPE has such a cable and it is listed in the Quickspecs for the drive:

HP 2.0m External Mini SAS High Density to Mini SAS Cable    716191-B21

NOTE: Use this cable to connect HPE SAS external LTO tape devices to HPE
SAS controllers with external Mini-SAS high density connectors as used by HPE
H241 Host Bus Adapter.

There is also a 4.0m version 716193-B21

Does your server have a compatible HBA?  I would expect that even an offbrand cable should at least be enough for the tape drive to be discovered. The INCITS/T10 standard that defines how those connectors are used for SAS defines the cable wiring as well and anything wired to that spec should connect.  We've had signal quality issues with offbrand cables but usually the tape drives are detected.