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I purchased an used Dell PowerEdge R630 online and had the option to get it preinstalled with some SATA drives, but I declined as I want to install my own (brand-new) SATA SSD drives. (I don't trust used SSDs, especially older ones wear out too fast in my opinion and the seller didn't even describe the brand of the SSD - so could have as well been consumer ones).

Now I am sitting here with the drive caddy in the hand and am a bit confused about it: The drive caddy has two positions to hold the drive and one is labeled "SATAu". I was always under the impression that SATA and SAS drives have compatible connectors and same dimensions, so I wouldn't expect different screw holes. And from the dimensions of the drive, I'd actually expect that the drives should be mounted at the screw holes not labeled "SATAu", because then it would align perfectly with the end of the carrier (see photo below).

So, I have two questions:

  • What does the U in SATAu stand for?
  • Am I missing some adapter here?

Here are some pictures, so you can see what I mean:

miho
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1 Answers1

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When mixing SATA and SAS drives, you need to use an interposer card to make the SATA drive appear as a SAS drive. The SATAu caddies are for use with those cards, pictured here:

enter image description here

Bert
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  • Ah thanks, I see, I guess they are mounted on the caddies and thus the SATA drives need to be arranged a bit further back then? Then the screw holes make sense of course. – miho Jul 21 '20 at 13:09
  • But, when you say "mixing", you mean I only need the adapter when I plan to run both SATA and SAS at the same time on the same controller? So, - as would have assumed until now - there is no need for those adapters when I solely plan to install SATA drives and don't mix SAS and SATA on the same RAID controller? – miho Jul 21 '20 at 13:12
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    You may have the wrong drive carriers, that generation server should not need an interposer. – Bert Jul 21 '20 at 13:14
  • His caddies are the right ones. Just use the SAS holes for the SATA drives and you'll be fine. We never had any actual SAS drives, so I can't speak to a mix of SAS and SATA but would expect that to also just work. – Sixtyfive Sep 29 '21 at 11:28