Dell MD1400 SATA drive with PN939 Interposer

Louisbou,

The short answer is no, as the interposer isn't supported on the platform and really wouldn't need an interposer anyway, as it should work with sata drives.  Now apart from that Truenas scale is not going to work with an H830, as it needs direct drive access. So you would need a SAS12 HBA, or an equivalent LSI/avago branded controller.

Let me know if this helps.

hi @DELL-Chris H​ 

Unfortunately your answer is not very useful.

Dell PERC H830 does support HBA mode. You simply go in config menu, select Switch to HBA mode from RAID and reboot the server.

my R730xd and MD1400 are running with the latest firmwares.

In the MD1400, I have tried SATA drives, the controller does not see them. In the community everybody seems to have the same experience with MD1400. Some have reported that the older MD1200 will accept SATA drives. This is why the SATA interposer idea might work? Will it physically fit in the drive caddy? There is a list of supported drive for MD1400, can we use any SAS drive?

with these EOL equipment like MD1400, I believe we are not looking for officially supported configs, but for something that reasonably work well.

thanks for your inputs.

Any new insights? Development?

I was able to make the MD1400 works with SATA drive by adding a NetApp interposer card.

I had to ‘shave’ the side of the interposer PCB to fit in the hard drive tray.

it does not work with the Dell version of the interposer

Thanks, Louisbou. This is really helpful. Any chance you've got a note of the NetApp part number?

It is difficult to give the part number. I bought them on eBay and the part number seems to change from buyers to buyers.

you need to get the transposer that has some kind of « comb » at the top of the PCB