max hard drive capacity for T5810

I have the same question. My T5810 has 4 x NVMe drives one of which is my boot drive.

I am trying to convert it to a mini file server on my home LAN by adding 3 x 8TB SATA drives plugged into the HDD-0, -1 and -2 SATA ports on the motherboard. I have one of them in the drive cage which I installed and two others in the 2 x 3.5" bays provided in the chassis.  The SATA drives are enabled in BIOS, but they do not show up in the OS. I saw in the Dell Spec Sheet that one of the Storage Options is " 3.5" SATA - Up to (3) 4TB 5400 rpm"

Does this mean that 7200rpm SATA drives won't work in the T5810?

Does this mean that an 8TB SATA drive will not work in the T5810?

Is there an alternate PCIe SATA controller card that I can install to run the 3 x 8TB drives (Seagate Iron Wolf NAS - 2 x ST8000VN004, 1 x ST8000VN0022)?

Any help is appreciated.

Neil Howard

It's a bit late for you to modify/edit your post but don't post your service tag in public forum as it's your personal info.

Check your BIOS settings, you may try to enable AHCI in SATA operation.  7200rpm SATA drives work.  8TB SATA drive work. 

Thank you, Chino de Oro, for the AHCI suggestion.

My BIOS currently has SATA operation set to RAID, which I am not using. If I switch it to AHCI I will probably have to reinstall the OS and all my apps on my NVMe boot drive, right?

I will happily do this if you are pretty certain that switching the SATA mode to AHCI will allow the 3 x 8TB 7200 rpm SATA drives to work.

Neil Howard

Does anyone have experience running multiple SATA drives in a Precision T5810? What are your SATA operation settings in BIOS and do you have SATA drives of 8TB or larger?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Neil Howard

Hello @nhowardtx , it will be just a simple change from RAID to AHCI and you don't need to reinstall os.

• Open elevated command prompt (as administrator)
• Type:  bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal
• Restart the computer and enter BIOS setup
• Change the SATA operation mode to AHCI
• Save change and exit.  Windows will boot into safe mode
• Run command prompt again and enter:  bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot
• Reboot the computer and Windows will boot with proper AHCI driver.

Now, check in disk management to see the status of your hard drives.

@nhowardtx , for a system first released 5 years ago - detecting 8GB drives shouldn't be a problem (chipset: C612).
Identifying the problem depends on your operating system, for instance in MS-Windows you can check device manager, disk management or even system log via event viewer. This information normally should give you reasonable hints why drives are not visible.
Apart from enabling SATA in BIOS there should be system information page showing detected devices (hopefully listing newly mounted drives) or system diagnostics section, after changing (and saving) settings it is a good practice to do reboot.
Of course unless something different has happened there (e.g. data or power cables are not connected.

Another quick approach to eliminate other potential issues - might be by plugging a different drive (you know works for sure) into same (power/data) connectors, it will become clear outright whether storage controller port is operational or not.

Thank you, Chino de Oro, for the slick way and clear instructions for changing to AHCI without having to reinstall the OS. I will try all of this tomorrow and report the results.

Neil Howard

Thank you for your response, sam55todd.

My OS is Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, v22H2. I keep this system up-to-date, so I am pretty sure that I have the latest chipset and BIOS (A34) versions. I checked Device Manager and there are little yellow triangle signs by each of the HDDs seemingly indicating that is why the OS is not recognizing them.

Back in my BIOS, ALL of the drives are check-marked in System Configuration--> Drives and HDD-0, HDD-1 and HDD-2 all show the 8TB Seagate drives being detected (in BIOS). So I think that all of the power and data cables are connected OK.

I plan to change the System Configuration--> SATA Operation to AHCI from its current configuration which is "RAID On" to see if that will allow the drives to also be detected by my OS.

Thanks again for your helpful suggestions!

Neil Howard

sam55todd -

I checked the disks in Device Manager and saw a little yellow triangle next to each of the 3 newly-added  HDDs. I clicked on properties and it showed that none of these disks had any drivers loaded. That's probably why they were not visible in the OS. The BIOS change to AHCI probably forced a load of the appropriate drivers for these disks because they are now visible and usable following the SATA operation BIOS change to AHCI mode.

Neil Howard

I am glad that you get all your drives working.

The new 20TB drives should work ok