Identification of industry standard SAS & SATA connector vs. vendor unique connector.

 

HDD and SSD vendors may include an additional debug connector on the same end as the SAS or SATA connector. This connector is vendor unique and may be used for manufacturing and/or debug support. Any additional debug connector is ignored by the backplane or cables and will not be used.


Upon a drive replacement, you may notice or see the additional debug connectors if you receive a substitute part, this has no effect to the system and will function the same as the old drive.

 

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The SAS/SATA connector is an industry standard. There is the power section and the signal section. These are the only connections to the host backplane and/or cabling. 
The vendor unique connectors are not part of the SAS electrical connection/interface and can be ignored as there is no mate to these pins on the host side.

 

SAS Connector:

 

The image below shows Connector examples from vendors:



 

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