Connecting to multiple 1760 SAS tape devices in 1U rackmount

[Paul_637]

I have a 1760 1U SAS rack-mount tape device with a spare bay and am looking into making use of the second bay.

Inside the enclosure there appears to be:

A spare tape drive bay (front-right)
A spare connectivity bay (rear-right)
A "SAS Expander Bd." (rear-left)

This board appears to have two SAS ports on the rear (i.e. external-facing) and a "spare" set of SAS & power leads on the internal end, currently tied up on the right hand side, just where they'd connect to a second tape device.

So, do I just fit a second tape device, connect up this free cabling and use the second external port on the SAS Expander or do I need another SAS Expander board etc.?

If so, just so I know, what exactly is the second external port & internal cabling for on the existing Expander board?

I've tried very hard to find any manuals or install guide for this 1U enclosure but haven't managed to find any (would happily take a link to it).

Regards,

Paul

[CLEB · Accepted solution]

Yes you can put a 2nd drive in using the existing SAS expander board.

There was a customer advisory release about 12 months ago warning of SAS expander boards that were early revisions. We had one and it would cause our backups to fail after a random amount of data. I think revision E and above was required.

[Paul_637]

Many thanks for the response, and apologies for not coming back sooner! Points assigned...