Upgrade Inspiron 3650

Hi,

Welcome to our community.

To answer your question, firstly the system is not designed for RAID operation and secondly the chipset is set in a way to only accept one hard drive.

If you have an open slot for the controller and there's physical space for the drives -- both of which your should check before purchasing -- the other issue is that there likely will not be power connectors for two more drives so you'll also need to buy as many splitters as you need SATA power connectors.

The most basic reason is that there are not 2 additional power connections on a 220W itty bitty power supply.  There are also not 2 additional places to put 2X  2.5 inch HDD.   There is also NOT AN X4 slot and you cant put a raid card in the X16 video slot this is not supported.

That's a given, but thanks anyway

SpeedStep wrote - "The most basic reason is that there are not 2 additional power connections on a 220W itty bitty power supply.  There are also not 2 additional places to put 2X  2.5 inch HDD.   There is also NOT AN X4 slot and you cant put a raid card in the X16 video slot this is not supported."

This is not a useful answer.

First - the additional power connectors needed are easily handled with a power splitter cable, which 3-rd party venders have been selling and everybody has been using for decades.

Secondly - There are two spaces for 2.5-inch HDD clearly shown in the pic you posted. My machine only has one 3.5-inch HDD at present. So, those two spaces are currently empty.

Third - the RAID cards I'm looking at only require a PCIe x-1 slot of which there are currently two available. (your pic of the mother board) There are no RAID cards that require x-16 slots and besides the Video card is currently occupying that x-16 slot.

The only REAL question is - what "version" of PCIe do these two x-1 slots support?

Your answer is incorrect and makes no sense.

Firstly, a "system" is a collection of discrete components each of which have exact specifications. When you say "system" you are being very imprecise. I can only assume that you mean the motherboard does not "natively" support RAID. That's a given, many motherboards do not have built in chip sets and connectors that supply RAID functionality, however and because of this fact there are countless 3-rd party venders that manufacture RAID cards (collectively known as "expansion" cards) that do provide RAID functionality. Look up "RocketRaid 622" which plugs into a PCIe x1 and provides two SATA connections.

Secondly, you mention some "chipset" that supposedly only allows one hard drive to function with this motherboard.

This is obviously incorrect as this machine (Inspiron 3650) is advertised with either one 3.5 inch or two 2.5 drives. Why the "or" in the advertisement makes no sense as hard drives are not controlled by any "chipset" but rather only "recognized" by the BIOS. Unless you are trying to say that DELL has created a completely nonstandard BIOS.

In addition, having built computers for over 30 years, I have never heard of any "chipset" that regulates or limits the number of hard drives which can be attached to a motherboard.

If you would be so kind as to name that chipset - I would be most interested.

Lastly - All functionality related to RAID is contained on the expansion card and the "communication bus" and the BIOS only sees the RAID array as one drive.

So, I don't see why a PCIe RAID card wouldn't work perfectly with this Inspiron 3650.

PCI-E 3.0/2.0 is not backwards compatible down to PCI-E 1.1 

the 110 chipset is mixed bus with the X1 slots operating at 2.0 speed and the X16 slot operating at 3.0 speed.

(The bus does not down clock to the old speed and the UEFI Secure boot will prevent mass storage controller bios from booting.)

Only PCI-E 2.1 and 3.0 cards will work.   Not working PCI-E X1 cards are due to several of these factors.  X1 has nothing to do with Version of PCI-E.

Adding Splitters does not increase the power output of the supply.

Drivers for hardware and software do not load at all in secure boot systems unless they have Microsoft Certificates in BIOS.

The chipset is H110 aka 100 series Chipset.

Not only are there spaces for two ssd drives as well as an optical and hdd but you can also remove the slim optical and utilize the entire 5.25in drive bay by getting an adapter to allow the placement of another drive honestly I bought an external optical drive and anytime I need to burn a disk or watch a movie or boot from a cd/DVD I can simply plug the external in and all set I actually Purchased two y- power connectors for sata power and added Three additional drive as my pc came with only 1 hdd and everyone knows you can't go back to an hdd when you're accustomed to booting from an sdd it's so agonizingly slow

Not only are there spaces for two ssd drives as well as an optical and hdd but you can also remove the slim optical and utilize the entire 5.25in drive bay by getting an adapter to allow the placement of another drive honestly I bought an external optical drive and anytime I need to burn a disk or watch a movie or boot from a cd/DVD I can simply plug the external in and all set I actually Purchased two y- power connectors for sata power and added Three additional drive as my pc came with only 1 hdd and everyone knows you can't go back to an hdd when you're accustomed to booting from an sdd it's so agonizingly slow and the bios shows every drive

"Your answer is incorrect and makes no sense."

I disagree entirely.

" Look up "RocketRaid 622" which plugs into a PCIe x1 and provides two SATA connections."

BZZZT wrong answer again.  The 622 has 2 EXTERNAL ESATA PORTS.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115076

"Secondly, you mention some "chipset" that supposedly only allows one hard drive to function with this motherboard."

I did not say that.  The Power Connections are not there for 4 drives.

"This is obviously incorrect as this machine (Inspiron 3650) is advertised with either one 3.5 inch or two 2.5 drives. Why the "or" in the advertisement makes no sense"

It makes perfect sense based on maximum power AND the number of hard drive power connections.

You are ignoring the pictures of the inside.

"In addition, having built computers for over 30 years, I have never heard of any "chipset" that regulates or limits the number of hard drives which can be attached to a motherboard."

Intel Chipsets ICH has been limited to 4 or 6 SATA and with the addition of SATA 3 only 2 drives are that speed the other drives either 2 or 4 are SATA 2.  For non server and workstation models the number of drive connectors is limited to 4 and INTEL RAID is usually not supported in BIOS.   The Bandwidth for several chipsets limit SATA3 to port 0 and port 1 with port 2 and 3 limited to SATA2 speed and RAID 5 not supported and sometimes no raid whatsoever supported.

"If you would be so kind as to name that chipset - I would be most interested."  

You have not been watching INTEL, AMD,  NVIDIA chipsets for 30 years.  There are too many to mention.   In the case of the 3650 there are 4 physical ports and RAID 5 is not supported AND only 2 of them are SATA 3. Z170, H170, H110, B170, Q150, Q170 - What is the Difference?

INTEL CHIPSET Features               Z170     H170     H110
Intel Smart Sound Technology          Yes        Yes        No
Intel RST12 for SATA/PCI-E RAID    Yes        Yes        No
Intel Smart Response Technology    Yes        Yes         No

"Lastly - All functionality related to RAID is contained on the expansion card and the "communication bus" and the BIOS only sees the RAID array as one drive."

The card operating is not the only issue.  UEFI prevents mass storage drivers from loading in windows 8, 8.1, and 10 unless there is a CERTIFICATE IN BIOS for said card.

"So, I don't see why a PCIe RAID card wouldn't work perfectly with this Inspiron 3650."

Mass Storage cards will not work with SECURE BOOT UEFI bios nor will they be seen.

Lastly the PCI-E version matters.   PCI-E 3.0 or 3.1 bus will NOT downclock to 1.0 or 2.0

UEFI allows booting from hard drives larger than 2 TB. Legacy BIOS systems use the Master Boot Record (MBR) hard drive format
, which limits  a boot drive to a maximum capacity of 2 TB. While this limitation was not considered an issue years ago, hard drive capacities in the terabytes are common in today’s enterprise environments.

With  UEFI BIOS boot the issue of security becomes important.
UEFI includes a Secure Boot function to protect against unauthorized
operating systems and malware rootkit attacks, ensuring that only authenticated code  can start on the system.

Secure Boot UEFI uses Microsoft keys and certificates to verify the following:

UEFI drivers loaded from PCIe cards/Storage Controllers

Drivers loaded from mass storage devices

Pre boot UEFI shell applications including firmware updates

Operating system UEFI bootloaders

If a signature verification fails or there is no certificate for a card in BIOS, the process halts and the associated device will not be available for use.  The system BIOS ROM carries the Certifcates for
Microsoft ® Windows ® Production Key, UBUNTU Linux®, REDHAT Enterprise Linux®.