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62197
June 30th, 2013 22:00
PE2950 SAS HDD backplane max drive size
Hi,
I am trying to buy from Dell Australia a new SAS HDD for our PowerEdge 2950. I would like to put in a 2TB SAS drive. However they will only provide me with a quote for 3 x 600GB SAS drives because they say the maximum internal drive space on the 2950 is 1.8TB. I am sure from reading other posts on this forum that I can put in a 2TB drive in each bay. Can anyone confirm that this would work. I think we have the mark I 2950 (not entirely sure) with a 4 bay 3.5 in SAS backplane. I have Windows Server 2008 installed.
Many Thanks
Adam
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theflash1932
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June 30th, 2013 22:00
Yes, 2TB drives will work. The backplane is not the limiting factor ... it is the controller. All controllers in a 2950 (SAS 5/6, PERC 5/6) will support up to 2TB physical disks. Your Dell contact's info is out of date (or simply inaccurate). You should make sure your system firmware (especially PERC) is up to date though.
Are you simply adding a single 2TB disk in a RAID 0?
adamvr
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June 30th, 2013 23:00
Thanks Flash, I have a SAS6 controller, I'm not sure what the difference between SAS and PERC are? I have a 72GB SAS drive with OS installed and was hoping to put in 2 x 2TB drives in RAID 1 to give a mirrored 2 TB capacity for data.
theflash1932
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July 1st, 2013 07:00
SAS 6/iR - RAID/non-RAID, RAID 0 and 1, no battery-backed write cache, no controller logging
PERC 6/I - RAID only, RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60, 256MB battery-backed cache, controller logging
2x2TB in RAID 1 should be fine (I just wanted to make sure you were not going to attempt to have a larger-than-2TB "disk" in Windows).
adamvr
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July 1st, 2013 19:00
Thank you for taking the time to answer, that's exactly the information I needed. Now to order some drives...
Regards
Adam
adamvr
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July 2nd, 2013 00:00
I am trying to buy a 2TB SAS interface drive from Dell Australia. They list a 2TB SAS drive (Dell Part 400-20273) on there website. I have asked for a quote for 2 of these and this is the response I get from the Dell Product Specialist...
I have checked the config of this system and do find that the system came with a SAS backplane, currently the highest capacity SAS drive available is 600gb, however we do have a 2TB model which is SATA. You could connect the SATA drive but however you would also need an interface card to do so, Kindly advise
Can anyone confirm that Dell have a 2TB SAS drive as they don't seem to know anything - or am I better off just buying online from Seagate or WD?
Thanks
Adam
theflash1932
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July 2nd, 2013 07:00
You aren't better off buying a generic/retail drive - you "should" be getting Dell-certified drives for best reliability/compatibility, BUT you don't need to buy it from them. Many online suppliers carry the same model drives.
I suspect their answer revolves around a misunderstanding of what they have on-hand and what is actually supported ... sounds like they simply don't have SAS drives that large available to sell (which is normal), but their wording makes it seem like they don't understand the actual issue.