SAS Drive on HP 8300 CMT

TXZX · ‎02-26-2023

I have a HP 8300 I'm converting to use as a NAS. TrueNAS Core will be the OS. My question is can I use SAS Seagate 10TB drives in a RAID or will I need a SAS/SATA controller? If I need a controller, what kind do you recommend? I have 3 - 10TB drives I'm planning to use for storage and a 500GB SSD for the OS. Thanks

erico · ‎02-27-2023

I doubt that anything above 4TB will work.

You sure are asking a lot from a mini PC that didn't begin its life as a server.

You might want to source something physically larger with a motherboard that has more PCIe slots than a mini or SFF PC.

SFF pcs are not good candidate PCs for upgrading, unless it is something on the order of an HP Proliant Microserver
Take a look at the video on a build someone else did. I like the HP Proliant Microserver 10th Gen that he used.

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TXZX · ‎03-03-2023

Thanks for the feedback. I have the 8300 CMT. It has 3 external (5.25) and 3 internal (3.25) slots. The MOBO has 4 SATA connections and 1 eSATA connection. I have a 500GB SSD I was going to connect to SATA0, and 3 HGST 8TB SATA drives I was going to connect to SATA1 (parity) and SATA2/3 to the storage volumes. There is a HP white paper on configuring this PC for RAID5 and I had planned to run TrueNAS Core. http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03519601.pdf

Any feedback is appreciated.

erico · ‎03-03-2023

In my perusing of the web searching for information on your 8300 CMT, I have not found anyone having success with installing legacy Hard Drives over 2TB.

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TXZX · ‎03-03-2023

Thanks for your help Eriico. I plugged in the 3 - 8TB Drives and booted into TrueNAS. The Tru (on USB stick). The NAS installer sees only 2 of the 3 - 8TB drives. I also noticed one of the drives makes a noise (it doesn't when plugged in pairs or single). Makes me think the PSU is underpowered. It's 320W. I'm thinking I need to add a 4 port SATA controller and upgrade the PSU. Your thoughts?

erico · ‎03-04-2023

Upgrading the PSU might not help, but you certainly could give that a shot.

Have you run a S.M.A.R.T. drive test on all the clicking drive? You shouldn't be hearing a click on any of them.

Adding a four port SATA controller should be useful.

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TXZX · ‎03-05-2023

Hi Erico. I found a HP tecch doc showing the 8300 CMT only supports 2 HDD and 2 ODDs. It looks like I'm going to have to look at a SAS/SATA card to use 3 HDDs. Interesting though. The HP manual says I can run 3 HDDs on SATA0, 1, 2 or 3

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