Replace Gen13 PowerEdge DVD w/SATA Bay - eviltoast

I’m new to lemmy. I posted this in one of the big self-hosting forums and it was deleted by the mod. I assume they felt it was off topic.

=======

This is a hack to add an extra drive bay to a Dell Server. Tried with both PowerEdge R230 and R430.

Replace DVD w/SATA Bay. They make replacements for laptop DVD bays that allow you to put a second sata drive there instead. This replacement part can also drop right in place of the slim DVD bay on a Dell PowerEdge. I’ve seen multiple references to this setup working. This guy’s blog has screenshots of it. https://tachytelic.net/2019/10/install-ssd-optical-13th-generation-poweredge/

I don’t see the disk. At all. The OS doesn’t. PERCCLI doesn’t see it. iDRAC doesn’t. When I got into Lifecycle Controller to manage the disks, It used to see the SATA DVD drive at the end of the list, but now there’s no entry. (On the R230 when I removed the drop-in and put the original DVD back, it went back to normal. The bay is in the R430 right now.)

I’ve got the right bay, it fits. More important, the electrical stuff all matches up. The drive light activates. Got a brand new drive in there. It hasn’t been tested otherwise, but I’d like to think its ok. In the post I’ve linked, it looks like he has his SATA set to ATA, not AHCI, so I tried that, but no change. Poked at it quite a bit. Can’t think of anything else to examine.

Alright … so there’s all the setup. And here’s why I think it doesn’t work. My main disks are all SAS on both machines. R230 PERC H330 - 4 x SAS 7.5k 3.5" spinners R430 PERC H730 mini - 6 x SAS 10.5k 2.5" spinners

I’ve read that you can’t mix SAS and SATA drives. As the DVD seemed to be a normal SATA, I figured I could use that port with a SATA SSD. But maybe not. It’s not worked on either server, and all the gear involved appears to be operational. It’s worked for other people. But every reference I’ve seen to this working seems to be all SATA setups.

Does anybody know for sure?

=======

Since I first wrote this, I’ve decided to remove all the SAS drives from the machine and test with just this SATA SSD. I’ll do that soon, when I’m ready to tear down the current array.

  • dbtngOPEnglish
    2·
    4 days ago

    I figured this out! There’s another (white) SATA port on the motherboard next to (blue) where the DVD player plugs in. I switched to the white port. Presto. It works.

    I know that sounds really simple.
    It took days of testing to get that far. Over the course of two machine builds. So months, really. And a lot of cursing.

    ================== Things to know if you follow my breadcrumbs.

    Perhaps the blue port only supports the DVD? Ipso facto. Nothing else works there. The white port works normally.

    The SAS and SATA mixing prohibition described in the manual only applies to stuff inside the main drive enclosure. This is an onboard SATA not addressed by the RAID controller restriction.

    In the BIOS setup screens, under SATA, all the SAS ports show as UNKNOWN device, whereas the DVD or added SSD show up in the last two (Ports I and J))

    You can use the existing cables and routing. Leave them where they are! Just move the plug on the motherboard over to the empty SATA socket.