Dell drive compatibility list

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Airz

New Member
Jan 22, 2014
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Does anybody know where the Dell drive compatibility list is hidden? I can't seem to find one and I just bought 6 3.84TB Samsung PM1643 SSDs which are coming up as blocked in my VRTX chassis.
 

NashBrydges

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Apr 30, 2015
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While I haven't used these specific drives. I have used MANY non-Dell branded drives in a number of Dell servers and all of them have worked. You don't mention which server and which Perc card you're using but my first suggestion would be to check and make sure that your Perc drivers and firmware is updated to the latest version.
 
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Spartacus

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May 27, 2019
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While I haven't used these specific drives. I have used MANY non-Dell branded drives in a number of Dell servers and all of them have worked. You don't mention which server and which Perc card you're using but my first suggestion would be to check and make sure that your Perc drivers and firmware is updated to the latest version.
This, alot of times updating the backpane expander firmware on these is whats needed as well (thats more for large drive compatibility though).
 

Airz

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Jan 22, 2014
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Its the Dell VRTX chassis with shared Perc8 controllers and all the firmware is up to date. I've also tried the drives in a Dell T630 with a H730p raid controller that's fully up to date and that just comes up as failed if I try to put one of the PM1643 drives in it.
I was a bit surprised as this is the first time I've had issues running none Dell disks in a Dell server. The T630 has just got Seagate 6TB and 10TB SATA drives in it and at one point I had 2 Samsung 950 Pros in it without any issue.
 

c steff

Member
Apr 18, 2019
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are the PM1643 formatted 520b sectors and does your server require other like 512b?
I just formatted from 520b to 512b about 10x PM1643 with sg_utils
I would get the same in perc card failed or blocked and I did above with h310 in IT mode
 

Airz

New Member
Jan 22, 2014
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Were you're PM1643 drives from Samsung or were they from an OEM? I bought mine from retail from so I'd expect them to have standard formatting on them rather than OEM specific.
 

Airz

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Jan 22, 2014
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So I just checked and the drive comes up as 512b on the raid controller when it fails so I just don't think the controller wants me to use these uncertified drives with them :(
 

c steff

Member
Apr 18, 2019
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Were you're PM1643 drives from Samsung or were they from an OEM? I bought mine from retail from so I'd expect them to have standard formatting on them rather than OEM specific.
removed from dell servers for use in desktop PCs
sorry if this doesn't help
just make sure they are the correct sector formatted for your type of server / perc card
 

c steff

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Apr 18, 2019
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So I just checked and the drive comes up as 512b on the raid controller when it fails so I just don't think the controller wants me to use these uncertified drives with them :(
did you find a solution? I just realised a friend has the exact same issues with few dell servers with same sas ssds pm1643
he managed to make 2 of them work (1.92TB) (random formatting/initializing in qnap and dell servers and he can't find the exact solution) but the others (one more 1.92TB, few 3.84TB and 7.68TB) can't seem to work properly
 

Airz

New Member
Jan 22, 2014
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No unfortunately not :( I didn't want to mess with the disks as I didn't want to risk not being able to send them back to the retailer. I ended up buying a bunch of replacement dell 3.84tb SSDs which obviously work fine.
 

c steff

Member
Apr 18, 2019
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No unfortunately not :( I didn't want to mess with the disks as I didn't want to risk not being able to send them back to the retailer. I ended up buying a bunch of replacement dell 3.84tb SSDs which obviously work fine.
what I don't understand the drives he has are dell OEM pm1643 and still don't work in few dell server models
 

Airz

New Member
Jan 22, 2014
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That is weird although not the first time I've heard that happen. If you ask Dell they'll come out with some rubbish about the disks not being certified for that particular controller. Lets be honest it's just so they can charge a HUGE markup on the disks and force you to buy them. Here in the UK the Samsung branded 3.84TB PM1643 is £890 but Dell want £4679 for the same disk with a Dell label and some tweeked firmware (the tweek is probably just to block none dell disks).
 

Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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That is weird although not the first time I've heard that happen. If you ask Dell they'll come out with some rubbish about the disks not being certified for that particular controller.
Dell has multiple market segments. There is "Enterprise" which is 512 or 4096 sector drives for their mainstream servers (PERC, etc.) controllers. There is "Enterprise Plus" which is normally 520 / 4112 or similar "oversize" sectors. I believe those are for EqualLogic and likely for EMC stuff these days. Then you have the low-end drives they sell in desktops / workstations. They don't qualify drives across segments.

Additionally, they don't qualify drives that were never sold on a system with that system. So if you want to use a modern 12gbps SAS drive in an older system, it isn't qualified / supported although it may work. Likewise for a 3gbps drive in a modern system. In general, you can go to the support page for a particular system and search the downloads for a drive model. If you find it, it is supported on that system.
Lets be honest it's just so they can charge a HUGE markup on the disks and force you to buy them. Here in the UK the Samsung branded 3.84TB PM1643 is £890 but Dell want £4679 for the same disk with a Dell label and some tweeked firmware (the tweek is probably just to block none dell disks).
They do it because they have customers who either don't care or are forced to purchase the whole system as a unit from a single supplier like Dell. The same thing is true with SFP / SFP+ optics from any manufacturer that tries to limit optics to only "approved" ones. The most egregious example has to be RAM in Cisco products. Dell realizes that some people don't want to pay extra and that's why they don't block non-Dell drives in controller firmware / drivers any more.

Most of the "special firmware" stuff is just tweaks to make things more compatible across multiple generations of Dell hardware. As an example, some newer drives sold in systems with PERC H700 controllers report that they are SPC-3 compliant, not SPC-4, because if you issue a SPC-4 command to a drive via H700 passthru, the H700 will get quite unhappy and hand out errors. That's also the reason that some drives that are 12gbps in their generic version are only 6gbps in their Dell variant.

Dell doesn't have the source code for drive firmware and doesn't want to install firmware to convert generic drives even if they did - they get the drive manufacturer to load the firmware and put a Dell label on the drive. And if Dell (or HP, IBM, whoever) found a serious bug in drive firmware and reported it to the drive manufacturer, you'd see the fix show up in the generic firmware as well if it was generally applicable. Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that the drive manufacturer will make fixed firmware available to purchasers of older generic drives, just that new drives will ship with the fixes. See the next paragraph.

One thing I like about Dell-branded drives is that there are firmware updates available - all too often with the generic drives it is a huge PITA (if even possible) to get firmware updates for existing drives. With Dell, you just go to their support site and download whatever the latest version is.