I'm looking for 3 or 4TB SAS drives for use in the older E610f. The models on the approved list are getting hard to find. Does anyone have suggestions for currently available SAS drives that are compatible? Thanks.
SAS drive recommendations E610f
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- Last Post 05 April 2018
Hi Paul,
In the Promise Compatibility list the 3000GB Capacity Drive refers to 3TB and the 4000GB is 4TB drive.
Example:
Ultrastar 7K4000 -Model HUS724030ALS640,Firmware A1C4, Capacity 3000GB - 3 TB
Ultrastar 7K4000 -Model HUS724040ALS640, Firmware A1C4, Capacity 4000GB - 4TB
Below is the link to download the compatibility list:
https://promise.com/DownloadFile.aspx?DownloadFileUID=1738
For any further queries please contact Promise Tech support on 408-228-1500 or you can also create a web support ticket in support.promise.com
Regarding compatible drive models found on the CL of older and EOL products, the only option is to get some drives with a similar IO port spec: 3Gb or 6Gb for SAS or SATA, 512 bytes per sector. It is not recommended to use newer drives with faster IO ports or larger than 512 bps.
Note that 3TB and 4TB SAS drives are only supported on a VTrak E610 that is running the latest non-Apple firmware version - 3.36.02.
If you have a VTrak running the Apple firmware versions - up to 10.06.2270 - it will not support drives larger than 2TB...
Thank you both for your advice.
I have the Apple version, btw. Would the HGST Ultrastar 7K2 series be a good bet for SATA drives? They aren't listed on the compatibility list but meet the specs that you talk about, Richard.
The sector size needs to be 512 native, right, instead of emulated? Many drives appear to offer 512 native and emulated.
Thanks again.
Hi Paul,
That drive could be a good choice, but there is no guarantee that it will work correctly.
Others have acquired a few of a drive model and done some testing to verify that they work before populating an entire chassis.
And yes, use a 512 native type...
Thanks for your help, Richard.
So I tried a couple HGST Ultrastar 7K2 (6 Gb/s) drives in the E610f. While they are listed as 1.5 Gb/s drives by the subsystem, they are performing very well without any obvious problems. With a RAID 1 array I'm seeing read speeds approaching 300 MB/s or even over sometimes. It appears that the drives are listed at 1.6 Gb/s but are operating at 3 Gb/s speeds. Write speeds are around 130 MB/s in RAID 1.
Because these drives have a 128 MB cache and are so much faster than drives in our other arrays, I'm hesitate to use them for spares.
Do you think the 1.5 Gb/s listing is any cause for concern? Thanks for your thoughts.