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PowerEdge T330 Upgrade from 3 Drives to 8 Drives
I have a PowerEdge T330 that originally came with 3 drives. I wanted to upgrade to use 8 drives, but after putting in all 8 I found only 4 drives are detected. After opening it up it looked like I just needed a new cable that could plug into both the top bay and the bottom bay. After some quick research it looks like it might be a bit more complicated than it looked as it might require upgrading some parts. But I am unfamiliar with all this so I am looking for some guidance before I make any purchases.
What I have right now is my computer is picking up 4 out of 8 drives. What I assume is the backplane has two ports. The top one has a wire plugged into it, and the bottom one does not. This is why I assume only 4 drives are detected. The wire plugged into the top port goes to a port embedded in the motherboard. I only see one such port on the motherboard. What I am hoping all I need is a new cable that plugs into both the top and bottom ports before going to the motherboard.
What I found with a quick search is I might be in a situation where I need to upgrade from PERC S130 to H330. What I find a bit confusing about this is when I looked at the PERC S130 spec it states it supports up to 10 drives. My assumption is the plug on the motherboard is in some way associated with the PERC.
So if the PERC S130 supports 10 drives, and my backplane has 2 ports, I would think it should just be a matter of purchasing the right cable, is this correct? If so, what cable would I need to purchase? If that is not the case then I need to know what I need to upgrade to the H330 to make it work?
DELL-Joey C
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March 25th, 2024 08:45
Hi,
Yes you will need to connect the second cable to PERC. You would not be able to use PERC S130, as there is no other SAS port on the mainboard. On any other servers and yours, PERC S130 is an onboard PERC card, to utilize it, you will need to connect the backplane to the mainboard, but your mainboard is out of ports. Hence, you will need to use PERC PCIe, ie: H330. You can refer to this guide: https://dell.to/3Tv01wz
You need 2 components:
R5CDN Controller Card, RAID Controller, PERC H330 Adapter, 12Gb/s SAS, 6Gb/s SATA, PCI-E 3.0
P9VFY SAS signal cable, PERC to backplane for X8 HDD (HW RAID) configs
Here's the PCIe slot priority installation: https://dell.to/4cwKghC