Dell H730/H740 drive compatibility

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coolrunnings82

Active Member
Mar 26, 2012
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Hey anyone know if Dell is back to blocking non-branded drives in their RAID controllers? I was reading something about them blocking consumer SSDs but was curious if they block enterprise drives like the HGST HC510. Any first hand experience one these two RAID controllers with non-Dell branded drives would be appreciated!
 

Netwerkz101

Active Member
Dec 27, 2015
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Your post had me curious.
PowerEdge T130 + Perc H730
Original 4x 1TB 3.5" Enterprise Drive Dell - Seagate OEM
Old consumer SSD - 2.5" Crucial C300 60GB
Old consumer HDD - 2.5" Western Digital WD5000BPKT

All seem to work ok ... I can only do RAID0 because I don't have multiple SSDs.
I don't have any enterprise drives to try other than the 3.5" HDD mentioned coming with the system.

Currently installing Win10Pro as a test to the SSD.
I don't really see any issues.

I did expect to see somewhere in the controller config that I was running non-dell drives .. but don't even see that anywhere.
I remember the issue with the H700's from years back that Dell eventually released an updated BIOS that allowed non-Dell
drives to work ... but it gave a warning that I was using non-dell drives.

Not sure what else i can look at ...seems to work okay.

Do you have a link to where you read it may not work??
 

coolrunnings82

Active Member
Mar 26, 2012
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Yeah I run 3x R720's here with H710 controllers on the latest firmware and I'm using Intel DC3700 SSDs and Seagate Enterprise 8tb drives and the only prompts I get are that the drives aren't certified (not that I give a rat's backside). That said, someone on Reddit was mentioning that. Here's a link to the thread:
Consumer Grade SSD : sysadmin

Lotsa non-related comments in there but it got me curious as I'm planning to set up a couple R740's for a school soon and don't want to get blindsided by that. That said, the school's got enough trouble coming up with funding for servers let along Dell's exorbitant markup on SSDs.
 

Airz

New Member
Jan 22, 2014
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I've run consumer and enterprise sata hdds and SSDs on the perc h730p without issue. What I've found though is that you will start to run into issues if you try to use none Dell Sas drives.
 

coolrunnings82

Active Member
Mar 26, 2012
407
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I've run consumer and enterprise sata hdds and SSDs on the perc h730p without issue. What I've found though is that you will start to run into issues if you try to use none Dell Sas drives.
What type of issues? I know not to mix and match SATA with SAS. What happens with SAS drives that are not Dell branded?
 

Airz

New Member
Jan 22, 2014
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I've had them come up as blocked in the raid console rendering them unusable. This happens when the raid controller doesn't like the firmware on the drive.
 

microserf

New Member
May 20, 2019
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I've had them come up as blocked in the raid console rendering them unusable. This happens when the raid controller doesn't like the firmware on the drive.
Do you remember which model(s) you saw this with? I haven't had any issues with a few Seagate 2.5" ST2000NX0323 Nearline SAS 3 drives (KT02/Enterprise v3 and KT04/Exos revisions) connected to a H730P in an R630. I'd like to know what to avoid.