It is important to distinguish between the concepts of “port” and “connector”. Ports of hardware devices are also called interfaces, whose electrical signals are defined by interface specifications, and the number depends on the design of Controller IC (also including RoC). But interface or port, must rely on a physical form — mainly pins and add-ons, can play the role of connection, and then constitute the data path. Hence the interface connectors, which are always used in pairs: one side on a hard drive, HBA, RAID card, or backplane “snaps” together with the other side on one end of the Cable. As for receptacle connector (receptacle connector) and plug connector (plug connector), it depends on specific connector specifications.
SATA cables and connectors are relatively simple. One port corresponds to one interface connector, and the cable only has a single connection. SAS, on the other hand, supports four wide links from the start and allows up to four narrow link ports to be aggregated into one wide port, and the corresponding connector specification is formulated. As a result, there are at least two types of SAS interface connectors. In addition, there are dozens of SAS cables that can be combined. The variety of SAS cables is even greater if you consider the changes in the shape of the interface connectors that computer manufacturers have made for wiring.
SAS first defines the interface connector for a hard drive, and its specification is SFF-8482. The SAS hard drive interface is identical to the SATA hard drive interface, except for its hard-key locking design to prevent SAS from plugging into SATA drive systems, and SATA data cables cannot be directly connected to SAS hard drives. But SAS cables are compatible with SATA hard drives.
Internal Connector：Mini SAS 4i（SFF-8087）
Post time: Mar-16-2023
