What is an SFF hard drive?

SFF = small form factor. The drives themselves are just 2.5" drives with either a SAS or SATA interface. Just as importantly, does the drive controller on the server take SAS or SATA drives? I hope, for your sake, that it's SATA as that will make sourcing actual drives easier - most, if not all, 2.5" SATA HDDs or SSDs should work in that scenario. SAS controllers tend to be a bit more choosy and, of course, the drives are more expensive for the same capacity. The tray your referring to is usually called a caddy in my experience.
 
Yeah you don't slide desktop drives in there, you'll want a proper HP hot swap drive caddy and the correct SAS drives.
Find out which drives you want, and save money by ordering remanu'd (or still new in the wrappers) drives from serversupply.com
 
RetiredGuy1000 said:
Hmmm.... this is what I bought
HP ProLiant DL360 G7
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G7HK174/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Support:
https://support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c02206768

I see SAS and SATA discussed but cant tell which one I have. Oh well, my drive shows up Wednesday from Amazon. I should know real quick whether it works or not.
Click to expand...
If the server is not for anything too critical, regular SATA drives will work just fine; you just need to get the right caddies. I've had G7 HP servers running with SATA SSDs in the past (in RAID 1/10 configurations too).
 
So, I received my drive. Looks to be a SFF. Basically a standard hard drive, just shrunk a little. And I screwed it into the HP caddies I picked up a few weeks ago. This drive seems right. Perfect fit except that the male and female SATA connectors don't connect for some reason. So, the server can't see any disks.

Caddie seems right. Fits right in there.
Disk seems right also.
They can't both be right...
 
You do know there is a difference between SAS drives, and Sata drives?

Your server is SAS. The drive you have is sata. Therein lies the issue.
 
SATA drives should work in there. You can't connect SAS drives to SATA controllers but SAS controllers are generally compatible with both SAS and SATA. I've connected SATA drives to Proliant servers many times, including the gen 7 servers, like the one you have.

RetiredGuy1000 said:
So, the server can't see any disks.
Click to expand...
When you say the server can't 'see' the drive, do you mean the Windows installer?
You probably need to configure the RAID controller and create a logical drive. The OS won't see any drives until you've created one.
 
Also, if you find the RAID controller isn't seeing any physical drives for any reason, you may have the wrong caddies. In which case, try plugging the drives directly into the bays (without the caddies). You'll need to carefully align the drives as you push them in and you may need to insulate the bottom of mechanical drives using tape.
 
RetiredGuy1000 said:
Ah..this is how you do it, F5 I believe. Thanks!
Click to expand...
You can certainly do it that way -- done it that way myself many times -- but for a more graphical/intuitive way HP's SPP (Service Pack for Proliant) ISO includes Smart Array Controller. The 'official' or 'proper' way to set up a Proliant is to boot it from the SPP disc, because that will update various controller firmware too. You can also use the SPP from within Windows to update firmware and install HP server management and monitoring software.

Problem is, a few years ago HP decided to restrict access to the SPP downloads to only those that had an active HP warranty. :rolleyes:
 
There should be no issue using a SATA drive in a SAS port. That's normal. You can't go the other way around because the SAS connector has a bridge between the connectors where SATA doesn't.

upload_2019-8-28_8-50-40.jpeg

For drives to appear you first need to create an array in the RAID controller.
If you only have 1 drive you can just make a RAID 0.
After that you might also need to load a RAID driver in the installer. But I would assume that Windows Server 2012/2016/2019 would have the RAID driver built in for such an old server.
 
Moltuae said:
SATA drives should work in there. You can't connect SAS drives to SATA controllers but SAS controllers are generally compatible with both SAS and SATA. I've connected SATA drives to Proliant servers many times, including the gen 7 servers, like the one you have.
Click to expand...
mikeroq said:
There should be no issue using a SATA drive in a SAS port. That's normal. You can't go the other way around because the SAS connector has a bridge between the connectors where SATA doesn't.
Click to expand...
Wait, what?

I didn't know that either. I've got an abandoned PowerEdge T610 with a couple of small SAS drives that I've not been able to do much with because of the small drives and not wanting to buy more SAS drives. So, I guess I could put about any SATA spinner or SSD in there?
 
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