
Some few desktop drives (most of them seem to be WDC drives) tend to drop out on hardware RAID controllers, so it's very important to do some thorough tests before deploying them into production. For example, we had problems with WD Caviar Green drives in some HP servers because of the drive firmware. The real problem with 3rd party drives is compatibility. RAID) and a proper working(!) backup strategy are always a must-have. busy database servers), but for other tasks like file serving they are perfectly fine.Īlso, I'm sure that Google also would beg to differ, as they operate most of their server blades with bog standard desktop SATA hard drives.Īt the end of the day, any drive (even the $500+ Enterprise server drive) can fail tomorrow, so no matter what, appropriate provisions for redundancy (i.e. Due to their lower performance compared to 15krpm SAS drives they are of course not suitable for high I/O workloads (i.e. We use standard desktop drives in servers for many years, and they barely have a higher failure rate than Enterprise-class drives (which at the price difference isn't really a problem). It is tempting because of the price, but they are not suitable for use in servers. You can buy Dell/Certified drives from dozens of suppliers for cheaper than directly from Dell. You don't have to pay the premium of buying them from Dell. Certified drives are even better, as they are specifically tuned to work with the controller. If you value your data or the services your server will host, you need to invest in Enterprise-class drives.

You can order it with an H200 with a single SATA drive, but you will need to select a non-RAID configuration, then configure RAID on the card when you put your drives in.
#Dell perc h200 sata cable software#
Besides being a software RAID solution, the S-series cards only work with Windows, if that is a consideration for you.

While neither is an exceptional card, the H200 will be hands-down the best one. The H200 controller is a hardware RAID card (H = Hardware), while the S300 is a software RAID card (S = Software - it is little more than a connector card for all the drives). SAS also supports SATA - it is part of the spec (SATA connectors to NOT support SAS drives), so yes, the H200 will support SATA drives.
