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April 14th, 2025 01:30
Does T3600 support SAS drives natively?
Hi I have an old T3600 workstation that is working flawless with the latest BIOS (A18), a SSD drive (on SATA-1) and a SATA HDD (on HDD-3), with an Intel iRSTe driver installed. No raid card installed.
Recently I got a SAS drive (4TB Seagate). Google suggests that the T3600 supports SAS drives natively. But I have tried both Win7/Win10, and various versions of the Intel iRSTe drivers. no luck: the SAS drive doesn't show up in either the BIOS or the OS (Win7/Win10).
Before I give up, has anyone had success in running SAS drives on the T3600 natively?
Thanks in advance.
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mazzinia_
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April 14th, 2025 12:36
The onboard controller is for SATA only. To use sas , you need a Perc H310 ( or an H710P ), if you want to stay with controllers supported officially on that computer
qili00
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May 2nd, 2025 17:04
Wanted to answer my own question, after some digging.
Short answer: this particular mother board does NOT support SAS drives natively. Using a PERC card is the way to go.
Long answer: quite interesting (to me).
1. the chipset IS capable of supporting SAS drives natively. The Windows driver for storage controller is actually called "Intel C600 Series Chipset SAS RAID".
2. Intel sold (may still sell) a series of SAS/RAID "keys" - essentially a set of PCB that is meant to be plugged into the motherboard to enable certain drive type (SAS vs. SATA) or RAID configuration. They are color-coded and fairly expensive as well.
3. Without the Intel keys, the chipset defaults into supporting SATA / no RAID (SATA model).
4. Unfortunately for Dell T3600, there is no place on the motherboard to plug in such a key.
What does that leave us?
1. if you want to use SAS or RAID, buy a PERC card or other HBA cards.
2. or use software RAID over SATA drives.
hope this helps someone down the road. I ended up getting a H200 card myself.
qili00
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April 14th, 2025 19:37
@mazzinia_ thanks for your response. That looks to be the case, sadly.