Does anyone know if I can install normal 2.5" SATA drives inside an HP DL360 G5 server? Right now it has 6 72GB SAS drives. I am looking for raw storage for my files SAS performance in not required.
SATA drives in HP ProLiant server
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I believe that Womble's comment to Peter Schofield is the best observation here...these aren't true SAS disks.
No doubt you're being sold "nearline SAS", which is where they take a SATA disk and put a SAS interface on it. The drive mechanics are identical to the SATA version; only the interconnect has changed.
When you plug a nearline SAS drive into a SAS controller, it will be faster than the equivalent SATA drive because the protocols are different, and it takes a certain amount of time to convert between the SATA protocol and the SAS protocol. Wikipedia says that there can be a 30% increase in speed, but I've never delved into the protocols themselves, so I couldn't tell you.
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As an aside, I really don't know what kind of faith I'd put into those numbers. Storage Review does a pretty decent job, I think, but I can't figure out why they didn't get another drive to test when the disk started performing like this:
(source: storagereview.com)
That's a drive that should be physically identical and in terms of interface, should be performing much more in-line with the others. The fact that it shows a discrepancy like this indicates (to me, anyway), that there was something wrong with the device.
They do say that it checks out with Seagate's test suite, but I wouldn't put stock in the results until they're checked against another drive of the same model. Those results are just too weird.
Edit
Since it was brought to my attention that I didn't actually answer the question, my guess is that the SAS drive will give you better performance because of the reasons I listed above. That is what I would go with, unless research bears out the odd results that Storage Review got.
In addition to the problems above, you may have additional issue running these drives in RAID configuration due to the lack of TLER. (If you are considering a model without.) This quote references desktops and the RAID Edition drives but I imagine the same to be true in the 2.5" line if you substitute in "notebook" and "enterprise" or "SAS" where applicable.
Western Digital manufactures desktop edition hard drives and RAID Edition hard drives. Each type of hard drive is designed to work specifically in either a desktop computer environment or a demanding enterprise environment.
If you install and use a desktop edition hard drive connected to a RAID controller, the drive may not work correctly unless jointly qualified by an enterprise OEM. This is caused by the normal error recovery procedure that a desktop edition hard drive uses.
When an error is found on a desktop edition hard drive, the drive will enter into a deep recovery cycle to attempt to repair the error, recover the data from the problematic area, and then reallocate a dedicated area to replace the problematic area. This process can take up to 2 minutes depending on the severity of the issue. Most RAID controllers allow a very short amount of time for a hard drive to recover from an error. If a hard drive takes too long to complete this process, the drive will be dropped from the RAID array. Most RAID controllers allow from 7 to 15 seconds for error recovery before dropping a hard drive from an array. Western Digital does not recommend installing desktop edition hard drives in an enterprise environment (on a RAID controller).
Western Digital RAID edition hard drives have a feature called TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) which stops the hard drive from entering into a deep recovery cycle. The hard drive will only spend 7 seconds to attempt to recover. This means that the hard drive will not be dropped from a RAID array. Though TLER is designed for RAID environments, it is fully compatible and will not be detrimental when used in non-RAID environments.
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Best Answer
SATA2 disks should be compatible with the Smart Array P400i that comes with your server (or any other SAS controller, for the matter), although probably not with stellar performance as others have noted. But keep in mind that not all SATA disks are suitable for use with RAID because of the infamous Time-Limited Error Recovery parameter (TLER for WD drivers, also called ERC by Seagate and CCTL by others). Disks not prepared for RAID configurations will frequently drop from the array.