FS: 10x S3700 200GB [ALL SOLD]

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andytyk

New Member
Nov 2, 2016
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Grabbed these Dell branded S3700 200GB from eBay a while ago for a project but never ended up using them. No reallocated sectors and around 24000 power on hours.

Updated to latest firmware and links set to 6Gbps.

s3700x10.JPG

$80 each shipped via USPS Priority (price is firm). CONUS only. Would prefer Paypal.

ALL SOLD. Thanks everyone!
 
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SamDabbers

Member
Apr 12, 2017
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The two SSDs I received work fine, and with a little fiddling I was able to update the firmware to the latest Dell DL08.

Heads up: these drives (SSDSC2BA200G3T) are locked to SATA 3.0Gbps, so will top out at ~300MB/s transfers, which is well below what they're capable of.
 
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SamDabbers

Member
Apr 12, 2017
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The isdct set command fixed it right up. Having an SSD negotiate to 3Gbps is a strange default for the firmware to have. Thanks @Marsh!

For those wondering how to apply the latest firmware update on a non-Dell machine, you need to have the SSD connected to an LSI-based SAS controller. Dell's utility won't work with SATA ports.

First, extract the firmware to a directory somewhere, then manually run the updater utility. This will bypass an error saying the firmware is not supported on your system.
Code:
[sam@box ~]$ mkdir /tmp/dellssd
[sam@box ~]$ chmod +x Downloads/Serial-ATA_Firmware_999RW_LN_DL08_A00.BIN
[sam@box ~]$ Downloads/Serial-ATA_Firmware_999RW_LN_DL08_A00.BIN --extract /tmp/dellssd/
Successfully extracted to /tmp/dellssd/
[sam@box ~]$ cd /tmp/dellssd/
[sam@box dellssd]$ chmod +x l64/sasdupie
[sam@box dellssd]$ sudo l64/sasdupie -u -s payload -f
Reboot, then run the isdct utility to set it to link up at 6Gbps (shouldn't have to do this more than once; the drive remembers the setting) and you should be good to go!
 
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ullbeking

Active Member
Jul 28, 2017
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Wow, what a mess. This is why I am always incredibly careful when purchasing OEM drives. There's always some catch, like no warranty or a firmware issue like this, and unless the drives happen to be incredibly cheap I steer well clear.
 

SamDabbers

Member
Apr 12, 2017
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Luckily the quirks for these Dell branded SSDs are very easy to work around. I agree; if I was buying for serious business purposes, I'd definitely go for new parts with a warranty and support. Given that I purchased them for use in my home lab, and for a good price, I don't even mind that I had to tinker a bit :)

Honestly, it ended up being less difficult than flashing an LSI card to IT mode.
 

ullbeking

Active Member
Jul 28, 2017
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@SamDabbers Oh for sure, if I was just messing around in my homelab it would be a different story altogether, but then again, I probably wouldn't be purchasing such expensive, enterprise-grade drives in the first place unless they were really cheap or I actually wanted the experience of comparience OEM with retail-branded drives. And so on and so on.

My context is quite different. I've spent much of 2017 preparing my side-project which might be going live around March. It involves prototyping a cluster, deploying it in a remote colocation centre, and trusting my friendly business acquiantance, who I'm sharing the cabinet with, to lead me on the right path. This means I need to find the economic sweet spot on everything I do, and things like SSDs or HDDs need to be either incredibly cheap or have some sort of warranty. I need some sort of assurance that I have a hardware failure in a remote location it won't be too hard to recover from.
 

SamDabbers

Member
Apr 12, 2017
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Well, for what it's worth, these Dell drives seem to work and perform well in my testing since upgrading the firmware and correcting the SATA link speed setting last night. I don't anticipate that I'll need to mess with them again any time soon.

Good luck with your side project @ullbeking. I hope it works out for you!
 

ullbeking

Active Member
Jul 28, 2017
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Well, for what it's worth, these Dell drives seem to work and perform well in my testing since upgrading the firmware and correcting the SATA link speed setting last night. I don't anticipate that I'll need to mess with them again any time soon.
Oh sure! I've no doubt that they are likely to perform well, and if I had more free time then the idea of random tinkering wouldn't rub me up the wrong way so much.

Good luck with your side project @ullbeking. I hope it works out for you!
Thank you @SamDabbers! It started out small, and very quickly grew into something very big. It's kind of crazy now, but it is based on well defined principles. I have had a lot of positive support which may even translate into potential customers one day. I'm approaching this steadily and surely, it's self-funded, and it's more about my own self-education in distributed computation, business operations, and providing computing infrastructure that is useful for like-minded people who are trying to achieve similar tasks and are willing to share resources.

Of course I'll let you all know as soon as it's online and keep you updated on how it's going :)
 

andytyk

New Member
Nov 2, 2016
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Oh wow, thanks for working out all the kinks. I'll get these drives updated and set to 6Gbps before sending anymore out.

EDIT: All updated to DL08 firmware and links set to 6Gbps.
 
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Snip12

New Member
Oct 4, 2017
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Purchased 2, and they are as advertised, ~24k POH, and 100% life left on both

andytyk also already updated the firmware, and adjusted to 6Gbps. PNP, and recognized as 6Gbps right away
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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Change to SATA 3 6.0Gbps

Extract by running Intel SSD Data Center Tool x64 -v2.3.1.400
files are in c:\idsct

cd C:\isdct
isdct show -all -intelssd
isdct set -intelssd 0 physpeed=6
How did you run that on a Dell branded drive?

With v3 the only thing i get is

C:\isdct>isdct set -intelssd 2 physpeed=6
Error: The selected drive does not support this feature.

With 2.3.1 i get
C:\isdct>isdct set -intelssd 0 physpeed=6
Error: The device fault is set on the selected drive. This functionality is not supported in the device fault state.
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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Sorry, I changed my Dell SSD drive to 6gbps couple years ago, and I had not had problem .

You may want to ping @andytyk to seek his advice.
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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Ok, solved it :)

I had attached the drives to a Dell HBA initially which made firmware update very simple (directly supported update from the Dell binary).
However the isdct command was not working.

I then moved the drives from the HBA to the onboard SATA ports and reran the command and it worked:

C:\isdct>isdct set -intelssd 2 physpeed=6
Please power cycle the device.
For PCIe devices, shutdown the system and reboot.
Set PhySpeed successful.


Before fix:
upload_2018-3-4_10-51-48.png

After fix:
upload_2018-3-4_10-54-16.png