How many physical paths are supported on a SAS drive?

SATA drives typically have a single physical path, but SAS drives are specifically engineered for enterprise applications requiring higher availability and performance through dual paths.

SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives are designed with dual ports, meaning they support two physical paths for connectivity. This dual-port architecture provides redundancy and increased throughput, allowing a drive to be accessed through two separate SAS expander or controller connections simultaneously.

While a SAS domain can have complex topologies and many devices, a single SAS drive unit itself inherently supports two physical paths for direct connection, not three.

SAS drives typically feature two physical ports for connectivity to a SAS controller or expander, not four, though a SAS controller can manage many drives.