Hey guys, I'm looking to purchase some high capacity drives for a new file server setup on a Dell PowerEdge R710, using a Dell H700 raid controller. I plan to use 4ish HGST Deskstar NAS 7200rpm 6TB drives. I'll keep it simple: should I assume these are compatible? I've been researching, and it seems somewhere along the line, Dell released a firmware update to allow drives 2TB to be compatible. I haven't found anything to be 100% on compatibility, and my boss won't be too happy if they end up not being recognized. Anyone have any first hand experience?
The switch for the PERC cards does indeed come at the H700, the difference being MBR - GPT support for the drives. PERC6i is 2TB and GPT formats. Spec sheet for the H700 should have some more info, and I can verify that I have used 4TB discs with the H700 without issue. Basicly, you need to make sure three criteria are met. BIOS Storage Controller OS First and foremost, you will need a UEFI capable system/firmware. Anything 11th Gen and later will be switchable. Next, controller.
H700 is the transition between, as covered above. Once you have your LUN's served to the system, Windows will need to format these as GPT instead of MBR in order to claim more than 2TB. I b This link has some more in-depth info if you are interested. Glomgore AKA Glomasaurus Rex wrote: The switch for the PERC cards does indeed come at the H700, the difference being MBR - GPT support for the drives. PERC6i is 2TB and GPT formats.
Dell H700 Driver For Mac
Spec sheet for the H700 should have some more info, and I can verify that I have used 4TB discs with the H700 without issue. Basicly, you need to make sure three criteria are met. BIOS Storage Controller OS First and foremost, you will need a UEFI capable system/firmware. Anything 11th Gen and later will be switchable. Next, controller. H700 is the transition between, as covered above. Once you have your LUN's served to the system, Windows will need to format these as GPT instead of MBR in order to claim more than 2TB.
I b This link has some more in-depth info if you are interested. Agreed 100% This guy knows his Dells.
Thanks for the info, much appreciated! So for my situation, it seems like I should meet those three criteria. Bios: The 710 is 11th gen, and I have confirmed in the Dell r710 guidebook that it has 'UEFI 2.1 support'. Storage controller: the H700s are documented to work with '2TB' drives. OS: Will be using 2012 R2 most likely, but nothing older than 2008 R2, so that shouldn't be an issue. I've heard in other threads that non Dell branded drives are not guaranteed to work.
Should I dismiss that as user error? I should be good to go with the HGST drives, as long as I load things in UEFI, yeah?. I took the plunge on using some third-party 6TB SAS drives (12 x ST6000NM0034) about 6 months ago. I've had the GPT partition on the disk become unreadable twice, causing all the data to be lost. Fortunately this is all duplicated backup data (third copy).
I am unable to apply the newest firmware update referenced below, but technically my RAID6 VD is smaller than the affected size. Unfortunately I have been unable to test swapping the controller and/or drives to see what might be at fault since it is at a remote site.
Has anyone else had any experience? I'd love to know if someone has gotten the 6TB drives to work. Most recent update for the H700: Oh! One more IMPORTANT thing.
In all my research, I found that you need your drives to be 512e, not 4KN. The H700 can only deal with the 512e drives. I just want to add that you do not have to have a UEFI bios to boot with the 10TB drives in it. Let's say you want to put 6x10TB drives in it and run ESXi on a thumb drive. Or if you really wanted to, I do not suggest it, you can split the raid array. Make a smaller OS partition like most Dell servers ship with that is less than 2TB.
Dan 'Glom' Atchley wrote: The switch for the PERC cards does indeed come at the H700, the difference being MBR - GPT support for the drives. PERC6i is 2TB and GPT formats. Spec sheet for the H700 should have some more info, and I can verify that I have used 4TB discs with the H700 without issue. Basicly, you need to make sure three criteria are met. BIOS Storage Controller OS First and foremost, you will need a UEFI capable system/firmware. Anything 11th Gen and later will be switchable. Next, controller.
H700 is the transition between, as covered above. Once you have your LUN's served to the system, Windows will need to format these as GPT instead of MBR in order to claim more than 2TB.
I b This link has some more in-depth info if you are interested.