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Dell PowerEdge R730 LFF does not recognize WD Ultrastar DC HC310 SAS HDD (HGST Ultrastar 7K6)
Hi,
I just recently bought 4 used WD Ultrastar DC HC310 (6TB 12G SAS) HDDs to extend the capacity of my TrueNAS server built around PowerEdge R730. Now I have the problem that the disks aren't identified in BIOS and do not show up in the OS.
BIOS detects the drives, but can't identify them:

As you can see the already installed 3TB HGST SATA disks are identified just fine.
The only possible reason I can think of is that the disks are just not compatible but that would be kinda weird as the disks are enterprise grade versions from (even two) well known HDD barnds. And the Owners Manual just states that inserted disks needs to be SAS or SATA, no word that the disks need to be certified or something.
Is there anyone using those same disks in a 13th Gen PowerEdge? Could this be a firmware issue or sth?
One other issue in that context I have is that I can't see any disk (not even the working ones) in IDRAC. The physical disks page just gives me a RAC0501 error. Might this be part of the problem?
Many thanks in advance!
Dennis
Best regardsRAC0501
thapole
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September 26th, 2023 15:52
@Dell -Charles R thanks for the clarification! It seems my cabling is done as shown in figure 105. But what I just realised is that I am missing the controller module (see attached picture). Can you confirm that this should be populated if there is no separate PCIE SAS controller in order to be able to use SAS disks?
On the disks themselves - I couldn't and can't find any list for Dell certified disks and the manual does not mention certification in particular for the R730. So I was just assuming any drive is ok...
thapole
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September 21st, 2023 20:15
Another thing which just comes to my mind. Is the server just physically capable of taking the SAS HDDs but I need a PERC Controller or something else to be able to use them? The manual just doesn't say anything about that...
thapole
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September 25th, 2023 08:02
@DELL-Young E thanks for your reply! As far as I can tell I don't have a PERC installed, yes. As I stated above I can't really tell what SAS/SATA Controller as I can't find any information on that in the BIOS and the IDRAC page for the dsks fails with "RAC0501" error.
With lspci under Debian I just can see:
lsscsi looks like this:
Can you please elaborate what information you want me to retrieve using the white paper? As far as I can see it is just a cabling guide without any information on system identification.
(Bearbeitet)
thapole
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September 25th, 2023 20:04
@Dell-Martin S according to the service tag the server originally came with config item "780-BBJR - Configuration without harddisc". I checked the inside of the server and I just can see cables labeled "MB SATA A/B" going directly to the mainboard. Does that mean the server just has a SAS capable backplane and no controller to handle the SAS HDDs? In that case the owners manual is a bit misleading, I would say.
But if so, what would be valid options to achieve compability with SAS drives? I could only find information on that for PE servers up to 11th Gen. I wouldn't need RAID capability, so any 8 (or even 4 channel) controller with 12GBs SAS would be enough...
thapole
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September 26th, 2023 19:03
@Dell -Charles R thanks for clarification! Almost thought that this might be the problem. I'll just gonna get a SAS capable PERC and upgrade the system then.
Still a bit of a bummer that the manual doesn't state that there can be SATA only configs.