PowerEdge C2100 Internal drive controller

Hello

I was thinking possibly to use the onboard SATA drive connectors but there must be some sort of daughtercard that accepts the connector for the two internal drives.

No, you just plug them into SATA 0 and 1 on the system board.

I purchased the internal SATA drive cable which has two SATA connectors on one end and a single 'card edge' slot designed plug on the other.

I don't know what cable that is. You should just be using a normal SATA cable that goes directly from each drive to the system board. The cable we use is part # YNKX3, but I don't see why any other SATA cable would not work in it's place. We cable it with one cable for each drive, so there would be two of those cables for two drives.

I'm looking all around on the motherboard and the H710 card and cannot find where to plug the internal drives in. I'm starting to think there's some other sort of option that I need to get.

This should be extremely simple. Are you sure that you have an expander backplane with the two internal drives? Do you have a mounting position for 2x2.5" drives inside the chassis? Which backplane do you have(3.5" 1:1, 3.5" expander, 2.5" expander)?

Thanks

Hello. Thanks for writing. 

The internal drive cable is Dell part number: 03JJM4

I understand what your saying about just attaching to the motherboard but I wanted to use the DP/N: 03JJM4 cable that's made specifically for using internal SATA drives. The other end, the single end, has a mini-sata multi-connector just as the H700 series cards have, an amphenol connector.

Thank you for the part number for the SATA cables... I like to keep everything Dell (I'm OCD when it comes to this stuff) but I'd really like to use the actual cable that's supposed to be used. 

Here is the link from Dell about the cable and Expander Backplane to plug the internal drives into. The H700 series card I guess will handle the internal drives also. I don't like the idea of having the motherboard control the drives.

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Here is the link: [View:www.ebay.com/.../181335424001]

The internal drive cable is Dell part number: 03JJM4

That cable is not for the internal hard drives. The 2x2.5" internal hard drives are only supposed to be cabled directly to the system board. You may be able to get them to work with other configurations, but we only validated them to be directly connected to the system board as I have already explained.

Part 3JJM4 is a cable for the 3.5" 1:1 backplane(3JJM4  CBL,CNTL,DRVR,3.5,1/1,C2100) that goes from the backplane mini-SAS connection to HDD0 and 1 on the system board. It is a cable that is very rare because most configurations use the cable that has connections for slots 0-3. That cable only has connections for two of the drives.

The 3.5" 1:1 backplane that cable is for does not support the 2x2.5" internal HDDs. Only the expander backplanes support internal drives.

I recently got a C2100 as it supported internal drives. And I have H700 raid controller. I am wandering how the internal SATA drives are cabled to the H700 raid controller? As of right now, my backplane is 12 x 3.5" Direct, and has 2 x Mini SAS cables. So if I remove one, won't it see the rest of the drives?

Is there an easier way to replace the internal Sata drives rather than powering off the server completely?

Thanks

Hi @MightyJainesh,

I'm unsure if H700 configuration supports 2X internal drive configuration. From the internal documentation, only H200 is listed with the 2 internal drive is configurable. The 2 internal drives are connected to the onboard SATA (ICH10R controller). There is no easier way to replace the 2 internal drives as they are not hot swappable. You will need to shut down the server to safely remove the drives. Also, you may need 3.5" Expander Backplane to be able to enable 2 internal drive configuration. You can find out if you have the backplane by finding out the DPN# of it and search in any search engines. 

What about the sas2008 mezzanine? Does that support the internal drives? 

Hello @MightyJainesh

I just double checked and I can only see the H200 listed for the 2 internal drives.

Regards.