Cable Matters Internal Mini SAS to SATA Cable 1.6 Feet (SFF-8087 to SATA Forward Breakout)

Arrived quickly and well packed with no damage. The cables feel solid and connectors fit snug without any looseness. Worked perfectly with my setup, all drives were detected right away. Good build quality and clean signal, no issues during use. Length is just right for a neat internal layout.

I bought these for a NAS I built out of an old Dell T-7400 workstation. Need this cable to attach to a Perc card, connecting to my 4x WesterDigital RED Plus drives. The cable works pert. All in before adding the actual drives a $120 build vs $500 for a new NAS and it was fun to build.

I needed this SFF 8087 to SATA Forward Breakout Cable, 3.3 feet, which connects the one SFF 8087 Connector on my LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i RAID SBA Card to 4 SATA HDD's. Cables of this type, where you have the one SFF 8087 connector to 4 SATA or SAS HDD's are delicate cables to begin with due to the wire connections, this cable appears well made. The Connectors seem to be of good quality and fit snugly into their receptors, the main leads from the SFF connector are wrapped in a heavy insulator to protect the cables and while I didn't measure the length of this heavy insulator was about halfway on the total cable. The 4 separate leads were smaller wire gauge with a light blue plastic insulator and SATA standard connectors. Each of the 4 connectors were labeled with a simple plastic tag numbered from 1 thru 4 so you can identify each drive connected. I had no problems with communication between the Card and the HDD's, worked perfectly upon installation. The SATA connectors are typical ones that you find on many cables, nothing special, not too hard to install or remove, just press the small spring metal tab and the cable can be removed. They click into place with little effort. In hindsight, I may have tried to find cables with right angle SATA connectors as there wasn't much space between the connector and my case, but it worked without having to bend any wires. Its important that the wires are not crimped when installed. The Cable itself was quite long. I have mine in a large Mid Tower PC Case where the stacked and connected HDD's are to the right of the Motherboard so there was plenty of cable to route around the case. This cable would have been adequate for a larger case as well, either a Server Case or larger tower pc case. The 1.6 foot cable may have also worked but when I ordered it, I didn't want to take any chances on it being too short. Better to run the cable around the perimeter of the case than have it be too short or have to run it too close to a heat source of block airflow. I have other Cable Matters cables and they were of similar good quality, I don't think you can go wrong with this cable.

I had originally ordered a set of SAS to SATA Forward Breakout cables on ebay along with my order for an LSI SAS 9207 Sata/SAS HBA hard drive controller card. They were definitely cheaper on Ebay, and the ones from Ebay worked perfectly fine for 6 months until I decided to upgrade my Unraid server to an all new Ryzen build. During the the re-build, when disconnecting the LSI HBA card, I accidentally pulled part of the black sleeve covering the SAS connector stem area. It appeared to be cosmetic only. After firing up the new build everything booted fine and seemed stable. Data copied well and it all appeared to be great.... until I tried to validate partiy. I quickly started to experience consistent parity errors with different error counts every time I validated. It was random, though SMART drive tests all passed fine. After many hours of investigation and troubleshooting, isolating drives, etc....I finally decided to just try replacing cables with these ordered from Amazon (for fast Prime delivery). To my amazement parity validated perfectly! These immediately resolved all of my stability issues, and parity was able to be rebuilt and validated numerous times (to confirm). I had heard that the Unraid parity process could be sensitive to cable issues, but wow after 30+ years of building PC's I was quite suprised but am happy to have gotten a quality cable, delivered quickly!

I originally reviewed these as terrible for drive read errors and rated it 2 stars.... I have since changed this due to the fact that the SATA Controller card was actually the culprit. These cables do an excellent job, just ensure that you route them properly and for the love of God, don't braid them or twist them around each other as that only helps cause more read errors. ;) The good: Good color, excellent flex for cable management and great reach! I needed 2' for cables and the others are only 1.5' so this was excellent at 3.3'. If you can have excellent cable management within the case and keep these away from interference then they should work fine. The hopes: I'm a little bummed that they all go from 1-4 where it would be more apt to show 0-3 and would be nice to have an option for labeling (or have labels included that go 5-8 or 4-7 but that would just be a nice addition. The bad: *Redacted* This section removed by me once I discovered the issue was with the controller and not necessarily the cables.

Solid, snug fit of the plugs, especially on the 8087 SAS side. The beautifully slim SATA lines are flexible without being flimsy. Length is more than enough for any application I can think of. Cleanly labeled. Very easy to use in a 2-to-8 configuration. For the typical LSI 8i HBA / SATA JBOD setup, this is the *perfect* cable. Your build will come out looking clean and running well.

While experimenting with new storage options at the house, I had recently acquired a used PERC SAS controller, and needed an adapter for several disks. This adapter cable did the trick! Simple plug-and-play. Once I booted the machine, a <CTRL>-R let me configure the drives I had, all of them recognized easily by the SAS controller. The PERC controller has two connections, this cable takes up one, and lets you connect (4) SATA disks. Adding a second cable will expand to (8) SATA disks. While this is not a review of the PERC controller, speeds were quick, stable, and no problems. The cables are thin and flexible, with a black mesh covering that looks strong and protective. I would not have any problems with cable-management using these. What is also a benefit is that the SATA connectors have the locking metal tab, as opposed to just friction holding them in. Although I've never had a problem with a SATA connector falling out, these are a nice touch. It works nicely.

Replaced some cheap cables I had grabbed off eBay with these and my Unraid server went from throwing parity errors constantly to running completely clean on the first rebuild. The connectors feel solid and click in snugly on both the SAS and SATA ends without any looseness. The individual SATA leads being labeled 1 through 4 is a really nice detail when you are keeping track of which drive is which in a big array.