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Does the dell Perc 6/i controller support 3TB drives?

ensnare
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2 Answers2

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It does not look like it does...

From HDD Support for 2.5TB, 3TB Drives and Beyond (Article is recent - Mar 31 2011, 5:21 PM EDT):

IMPORTANT NOTE! Only the Dell H700 and H800 currently support the 3TB drives (H200 will add support later this year) - NO earlier controllers, such as the PERC4/5/6, SAS5/6 (or ANY other Dell controller not mentioned) have this support and in some cases, even though you may be able to see the drive, this has NOT been tested or validated, so possible data loss could be experienced. ONLY use the Dell H700 and H800 with the proper firmware to ensure a tested and validated >2TB solution!

It has not yet for PERC 5 controllers, according to previous question Perc 5/i and 3TB drives?

I also went through the Driver/Firmware upgrades for the PERC controllers, and there is no mention of >2TB Hard drives.

Also, there's nothing to say that Dell won't release firmware to do such--but I think that is unlikely as well. If you do need that about going to the H700 or H800 controllers?

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Theo
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5

No. The 4KB sector-size on 3TB drives is not supported by the Perc 6/i.

sysadmin1138
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Adam Jacob Muller
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    Since you seem to know more than me about it, do you know if this is a hardware/software limit or something dell plans on "fixing"? – Adam Jacob Muller Apr 11 '11 at 01:54
  • This contradicts what is reported in [a post elsewhere](https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/421605-replacement-raid-controller-in-dell-poweredge-2950?page=1#entry-3017541): _"I've been down this same road before with some of my old 2900's with Perc 6's. It turns out that they do support >2TB so long as you are using drives with 4K sectors. Check out Hitachi's Ultrastar 7K4000! "_. Can anyone comment? – crishoj Oct 14 '14 at 21:30