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R430 picky about drives? (alien.top)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have a recently acquired DELL R430 curently with a single Intel DC3520 SSD. I wanted to add some additional disks, but none of them are detected by the operating system. The server has a Perc H330 in HBA mode.

An old Seagate 80 GB laptop drive that works when connected to my desktop - top light on caddy is on (same as with the current intel SSD), i can hear the disk spinning up, but not detected in the HBA settings.
Two Samsung SAS SSDs drives from ebay (MZ-ILS1T6N, EMC P/N: 118000301) - are detected by the Perc but with some strange values - note the (0KB) in the title. on the caddy both lights are on

Am I missing something or are these drives simply not compatible with the R430?

https://preview.redd.it/a1ayfy63x50c1.png?width=1051&format=png&auto=webp&s=c59204709a8bb2f03ce6c341c191c96a40f63cca

https://preview.redd.it/1dwvver4v50c1.png?width=1065&format=png&auto=webp&s=9ace0a9827a86c4882b908b100b1246e51369b92

The SAS drives have some strange connector on the front - any idea what is that? (i suspect some proprietary EMC caddy connector?)

https://preview.redd.it/fdde37ixv50c1.jpg?width=1599&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa522dfe229bba516e285dc713de48381b8a4d58

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some Dell servers require HDD/SSDs with Dell firmware locking you to their ecosystem. No idea about workarounds but I assume they exist when the factory warranty doesn't matter anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Not the case for R430 and AFAIK any other Poweredge series.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

OK, drives are reformatted, but it went kinda interesting:

- the Dell did not recognize the drives at all, so was unable to format them. Apparently it needs a RAID card in full IT mode and my PERC H330 in HBA mode was not sufficient. I did not want to mess around with flashing the PERC, so my plan was to put them into my other server with a LSI9211 in IT mode.

- the other server has 3.5 caddies, but I had a 3.5->2.5 adaptor I ordered from ebay a few years ago for my old Gen7 Microserver. The adaptor has some kind of PCB, so the disk is not directly attached to the server, but trough the adaptor.

- at this moment i realized that the EMC drives are SAS, but the adaptor is SATA, so it probably wont work, but i gave it a try regardless. The disks fit it, as the internal port on the adaptor did not have the center piece SATA drives normally have between the data and power port, but neither had any connectors between them.

- much to my surprise, the server recognized the disks and was able to format them using sg_format to 512b, and putting them back to the dell they are recognized without any issues.

As for the old 80GB HDD, its not recognized by the other server as well - not showing up among the devices. not sure why, since it works flawlessly when connected to my desktop.

the other remaining mystery is that front connector on the EMC SAS drives. any idea what is that for?