Poweredge R730 without Disk controller

TrueNAS General
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Hi. I have inherited an Poweredge R730, that i am planning to make a TrueNAS out of. However, this server was delivered without an disk/raid controller. It only has onboard SATA. I’ve bought an PERC H330 that im planning to flash to HBA330, but i need the cables that goes from the PERC controller to the backplane.

Right now (from factory) there is two separate miniSAS to miniSAS cables connected from the motherboard into the backplane.

When browsing Ebay for the right cable, i find two different cables. One type that is PERC->Dual miniSAS (two miniSAS plugs stuck together) , and one that is PERC->Two miniSAS (two single, not stuck together).

Now to the question:
My backplane does not have a “dual miniSAS” connector. It has Two separate miniSAS connectors.
I am worried that my backplane does not support SAS disk or something. Does anyone know if Dell shipped different backplanes, if the server was ordered without any disk controller (motherboard sata only)?

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Try searching the Service Tag on Dell’s Support site and clicking on “Documentation” and find the manual for your machine.

The manuals for my 720xd provided wiring information for the different RAID and backplane options, this would tell you if you needed the cable with one or two miniSAS ends.

1 Like
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They all do, so that’s not a concern in the slightest. There are different backplanes, but they all support SAS (and all of the backplanes that take more than 8 disks have expanders on them).

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My backplane holds 8 x 3.5 bays.
Why is there some backplanes with 1x dual miniSAS and some with 2x single miniSAS then?

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I assume this is the one i need then:

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Because one was more convenient than the other for whatever reason - board layout, server layout, cost…