I just talked to our Dell rep about purchasing some PowerEdge R410s and R510s and he made a comment that the SATA drives are 'special' and can't be replaced by aftermarket drives because of some special connector/board on the drives.
I found some references to an 'interposer board' that is attached to the back of the drives/trays in some PE systems. Is this what he's talking about?
My plan is to buy the cheapest SATA drives from Dell (160GB) so I can get the hotplug trays and replace the drives with 1TB drives. I figured I'd just pull the Dell HDs out and replace them with aftermarket drives.
My question is: Is this as simple as it sounds or am I missing something? (basic PERC6/RAID config aside)
Best Answer
Yes, the Dell drives are special -- they cost a pile more, have a Dell warranty, and your rep probably gets a commission out of selling them, all of which you don't get if you don't buy Dell hard drives. (Whether those are benefits or drawbacks I leave to your own best judgment). For the record, we run aftermarket drives in our R410s (mostly SAS, I think) without a problem, using the same trick (buy cheapo drives, remove the caddies, use drives for target practice on the clay pigeon range).