Add SATA HDD to Dell PowerEdge T710 SAS Controller

[innoryan]

I am fairly new to server hardware but have familiarity with consumer line computing. I have a Dell PowerEdge T710 server with a SAS controller and 2 hot swappable hard drives currently installed, both 1TB, setup as RAID 1.

Is it possible to add a standard seagate barracuda SATA 4TB HDD into the SAS controller? I tried installing it by placing it in a 3.5" dell SAS caddy and no lights came on when I put it in. It was also not recognized by the system when I go into the RAID configuration.

I'm sure I'm probably missing something basic here.

 

[Snipergod87]

You can plug SATA into SAS but not SAS into SATA.

A SATA drive will work in a SAS controller.
Not really sure whats going on in your case though.

 

[innoryan]

Silly me... the HDD was not making contact with the connectors in the server because it was mounted too far up on the caddy. I need to slide it back so it makes contact. Now the question is are SATA HDDs hot swappable? Turns out they're standard 7.2k SATA HDDs in the first 2 slots too.

 

[Snipergod87]

The hot-swappable capability depends on the RAID controller (or if no RAID controller, the motherboard itself). Both SATA and SAS drives have longer ground pins which make contact first to allow hot swapping.
In general everything I have used supports hot-swapping, from servers to desktops. Since this is a server with a RAID controller it would be idiotic if it didn't have hot-swapping capability.

 

[innoryan]

The hot-swappable capability depends on the RAID controller (or if no RAID controller, the motherboard itself). Both SATA and SAS drives have longer ground pins which make contact first to allow hot swapping.
In general everything I have used supports hot-swapping, from servers to desktops. Since this is a server with a RAID controller it would be idiotic if it didn't have hot-swapping capability.

I'm positive the hardware supports hot swappable hard drives. Thanks for the quick responses.