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Optiplex 9020 MT Max Hard drive size
Hi, I just got a Optiplex 9020 MT and wanted to move over my 4tb data drive from my old Optiplex 755 and was surprised to read in the spec sheet that it can only accept max size of a 1tb hard drive.
Is there a work around for this? I was planning on adding not only my 4tb drive but in time swapping out the 1tb drive it came with and adding another larger drive.
Technical support said that the motherboard was not designed to accommodate drives larger than 1tb and it could damage the mother board.
I thought the spec referred to how dell was selling the Optiplex and not an absolute limitation. I am bummed that I will have to return the unit if there is not safe work around because otherwise it suits my needs nicely.
Thanks in advance for your input.
Stephanie
Jim-B
9 Posts
0
May 30th, 2014 12:00
>Technical support said that the motherboard was not designed to accommodate drives larger than 1tb and it could damage the mother board.
If I asked your exact question from technical support and they gave me that answer, after I picked myself up off the floor from laughing so hard, I would ask to talk to somebody who actually knows what they are talking about.
I'm not sure what the "MT" in your model means.
But I have set up several 9020's (no MT) with dual 2 terabyte drives in a raid 1 array. And I have had no problems.
You should just be able to plug that drive in and use it. As it will be the data drive, you shouldn't have to do anything.
Oh. A lot of times these boxes come from the factory with the unused SATA ports turned off. So you might need to go into the BIOS (F2 on bootup->drives) and turn on that SATA port.
sjglpd
5 Posts
1
May 30th, 2014 15:00
Jim-B Thank you for responding!
MT = mini tower.
The first try with tech support was via chat. I got the same response this morning on the phone with a different tech support agent. That the Motherboard was not designed for hd larger than 1tb. And that installing a larger hd could cause the mobo to malfunction.
I said I'd like to talk to someone who really knows about hd's and the optiplex machines, that I've had many optiplexes going back almost 20 years and I wanted to bring over the 4tb data drive installed in my optiplex 755. He then asked for the service tag id on the 755 and said that it was also rated for 1tb hd only and that I should not have a problem installing a larger hd in the 9020. I also asked several more times about a larger hd damaging the mobo and if doing this would void my warranty and he said no it would not. I might get this in writing via chat before I go any further. but yes, it makes no sense to me that one could not install a larger hd into an optiplex mt. Still I don't want to void the warranty on a brand new pc. one reason to go dell is the warranty.
sjglpd
5 Posts
0
June 3rd, 2014 15:00
Hi -- here is an update. I installed a brand new 2tb drive w/2 1tb partitions and a 4tb drive w/2 2tb partitions and am using one of the 1tb partitions as the C drive.
I have Windows 8.1 up and running just fine. The only glitch is that 3 devices under "other devices" are not installed right:
PCI Serial Port
PCI Simple Communications Controller
SM Bus Controller
Also, I am not sure what to drivers and cab files to install from the support page for my product. I will see what Tech support reccomends -- but they really have not been stellar so far.
sjglpd
5 Posts
0
June 26th, 2014 07:00
Hi, I now have the 9020 MT configured how I want it using the Dell version of Windows 8.1.
I have a 2TB with 2 1 TB partitions for C drive (win 8.1 OS) and 1 tb data + a 4TB drive (again 2 partitions 2 tb each) and the unit seems to be working fine.
The win 8.1 + drivers system recovery USB key from Dell did not want to work with the unformatted hd but I got it to install after formatting and unfortunately after it installed on the 4tb data drive -- creating its own partitions.
There is no way to set where the recovery key installs windows. This is a problem.
I had the 2tb as drive 0 and the 4tb as drive 1. I was wrong and it wiped out my data! The recovery key from Dell should work better than this. It should offer a choice and not blow away your data. This makes the recovery key from dell support a liability instead of a resource.
I removed the 2nd drive and got the recovery key to load the os onto the the 2TB DRIVE. And reloaded the data onto the 4tb drive after removing the special os partitions using diskpart in the admin command window.
I hope there will be an update to the Dell 8.1 Windows recovery key for their Optiplex PCs.
Also, I fixed the issue with the parallel and serial ports by downloading the Intel Chipset software and running it as was suggested in another thread in the dell forums.
It is odd that dell has a 1TB drive limitation stated in the Optiplex specs. I think it must hurt their sales.
best, Stephanie