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We have a Dell PowerEdge T330 server. This machine has 8 hard drive bays which support either SAS or SATA drives. Currently, they're all SATA. We're looking to upgrade one of the RAID arrays to SAS drives, but from what I've seen, this machine expects one or the other, not a combination of both. The documentation for this server only mentions that it supports SAS or SATA, but doesn't mention anything about combining the two.
I have seen this question which doesn't yet have an accepted answer. The answers are suggesting yes, it's possible. However it seems to also depend on the RAID controller.
The first 2 drives in this machine we intend to keep the two SATA drives which are already there on a RAID. It's the other 6 we'd like to upgrade to SAS.
Does this machine require that all 8 drives be SAS? Or can one array be SATA and the other SAS?
Jerry Dodge
Posted 2019-05-21T15:28:36.450
Reputation: 351
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Possible duplicate of RAID 0: how identical do the drives have to be?
– music2myear – 2019-05-21T15:31:32.257Also this: https://superuser.com/questions/713802/any-study-about-raid-arrays-with-identical-different-drive-models
– music2myear – 2019-05-21T15:31:52.827And this: https://superuser.com/questions/257892/matched-or-unmatched-drives-for-raid-arrays
– music2myear – 2019-05-21T15:32:03.043And, kinda tangentially, this: https://superuser.com/questions/380192/can-i-set-up-a-raid-5-with-a-bunch-of-drives-of-different-sizes
– music2myear – 2019-05-21T15:32:17.017@music2myear None of those questions/answers have anything to do with SAS vs. SATA. I'm more than familiar with the other rules of matching specs, and this question is about two separate RAID arrays, not within the same array. I'm asking about the specific server I have, whether it allows this setup. – Jerry Dodge – 2019-05-21T15:38:30.510
Like the question you've posted, it depends on your hardware, and you have the access to the documentation and specs for your hardware, including the Service Code necessary to find your exact hardware info on support.dell.com. The rule of thumb is that arrays have to be nearly identical drives, but you can have more than one type of drive connected to the normal RAID controller, so long as they are configured in different arrays. – music2myear – 2019-05-21T15:44:06.813
@music2myear I've read through the documentation for this server already, and did not see any mention of this. It just says it supports either SATA or SAS. It doesn't say anything about mixing them, neither in 1 array or different ones. Elsewhere I saw pretty much the same, SATA or SAS, not both. But I can't find much about whether 2 different arrays can use different ones. – Jerry Dodge – 2019-05-21T15:46:31.883
What RAID controller does your server have? – music2myear – 2019-05-21T15:55:42.903
I'm guessing you've got the H330, but as I noted earlier, you're the one who knows the Service Tag and so you're the only one who can tell us what model RAID controller you have. In the H330 documentation there is nothing that indicates whether you can do both types simultaneously or not. Personally, I would guess it does. However, this then comes back to the core question here: Have you tried it? – music2myear – 2019-05-21T16:00:49.457
@music2myear I'm not about to spend over $1,000 just to test and see if it works, but thanks :-/ – Jerry Dodge – 2019-05-21T16:05:20.033