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So I'm building out a VM/file server using a Supermicro X9SRA, and as I'm figuring out where I want to plug everything in I end up learning about the SCU on the Intel chipsets. I find a few things here here here that basically say "Don't plug optical drives into the SCU ports!" ... but none of them seem to say why.

So being the skeptical bastard that I am (plus the fact that I have a not-yet-commissioned server sitting on a bench to play with) I immediately plug an optical drive into one of the SCU ports, boot up a liveCD linux image, and it works just fine. Maybe it's slower, maybe there are some things it won't do, but for five minutes of random messing around I can't seem to determine how this connection is in any way different than if I'd plugged it into a "regular" SATA port.

Anyone have technical details on why this might be? Or is this just some old wives tale? ;-)

ljwobker
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  • have you read this (sorry, you have :)? https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkStation-Workstations/When-to-use-SCU-SATA/td-p/925205 seems like issue is that SCU port is 4x SATA (up to 24Gbps ??) which is not very useful for optical drives but can be used with SAS expanders/splitters – aaaaa says reinstate Monica Oct 13 '17 at 21:27
  • @aaaaaa -- Yes, but the only thing relevant is says is "since ODDs aren't supported on SCU" -- but my testing shows they work just fine. So is this statement simply not true? Or are there other things I should consider somewhere? – ljwobker Oct 13 '17 at 22:07

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