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I have a NAS System at home with a RAID-6 and somewhere around 20TB of data.

I have bought a LTO4 external drive that connects over SAS and a few tapes for testing.

A few questions:

  • Do you have any ideas on how to connect the RaspberryPi to a SAS (tape) drive ?
  • Is there any (opensource) software that could work to automate the backup of my NAS with the Raspi?
  • If the Raspi is not the ideal choice, what could be the smallest computer that could handle SAS Drives?
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    I think you are going to struggle. Even a cheap, common SAS card for a regular PC or Server is above your budget and those are the common use-cases - hence 'cheap' options. If you are on a budget i'd suggest you look for a second-hand server with an onboard SAS controller and use that. SAS is not a particularly consumer-orientated interconnect (like SATA or USB). – tobyd Jan 24 '18 at 12:05
  • I have a PCI second hand SAS card. However maybe there is a way to connect a PCI card to a very small form-factor computer without any PCI controler and slot – Jonathan DEKHTIAR Jan 24 '18 at 12:23
  • Such a contraption may exist that provides you a PCI (likely PCI-e ) interface over USB but performance would be horrible. I think you are looking at the wrong device for whats typically an enterprise, not hobbyist solution. – tobyd Jan 24 '18 at 13:21
  • @JonathanDEKHTIAR can you elaborate on the type of nas system you have? – Mohammad Ali Jan 28 '18 at 20:00
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I would suggest buying a low-power PC in a mini-tower. Just enough of a machine to fit your PCI board in. Anything I have seen has cost more than such a PC.

You can even probably get it used to spend less money, but even a low-end PC will cost under $1,000.

Nothing I've searched for will connect a USB port to a SAS device.

If you really wanted to do this, you'd have to do a lot of work. I'd start by looking up the PCI bus' electrical specs so that you could connect to it. Then you'd need a power supply to power the tape drive and probably the PCI board.

Then the real work begins: you'd need to write a custom driver.

Just get the PC if there is a driver available. Otherwise you have an interesting-looking paperweight, unless you are very good at electronics and programming and have a lot of spare time. I like these things and are good at them, and I wouldn't try it using a Raspberry Pi unless somebody were willing to throw a lot of money at me.

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  • I think you have very good points, do you know if a RAID SAS PCIe card can do the job ? I don't know if a RAID card must do RAID volumes or if it can connects HDD or Drives (such as tape drives) normally. Thanks a lot for the help. For information, I have this SAS Card: Rocket RAID HighPoint 4322 – Jonathan DEKHTIAR Jan 26 '18 at 13:33
  • Sorry, I wish I could help further. I have read that some SATA RAID cards will boot if the single drive isn't part of a RAID. – NomadMaker Jan 26 '18 at 16:07
  • No problem, if I don't have a better solution by the end of the bounty period related to the RPI I will accept your answer and you will get the reward. Thanks a lot – Jonathan DEKHTIAR Jan 26 '18 at 17:32

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