DVD SATA port in server?

[iroc409]

This is probably a dumb question, but I have a Dell T110ii as my storage server. It has 5 internal SATA ports, and one eSATA. I don't remember what chipset it uses, but it's Sandy Bridge/1155.

One of the internal SATA ports is a different color than the others and is labeled "DVD". Obviously, it's connected to the factory DVD drive. Is there anything different about this port whatsoever, that would cause any issues if I removed the DVD drive and installed say a SSD for a boot drive?

I can't think of any, but not sure why they would have labeled/colored the connection specifically. Dell has done stranger things...

 

[Tsumi]

I would say just plug it in and see what happens. Worse thing that could happen is that the SSD isn't recognized, since it's just a data port. It shouldn't fry anything.

Keep in mind the Sandy Bridge chipsets only have 2 SATA III ports. Not that it really matters, random reads/writes on modern SSDs aren't bottlenecked by SATA II anyways.

 

[Lost-Benji]

Usually set in BIOS to be a boot option. Connect SSD and see what happens.

Chipsets will be Intel.

 

[iroc409]

Thanks for the info, I will just try it out and see what happens. I wanted to install to one of the internal USB ports, but that has been a major headache. I can get it to install, but it boots to the Blinking Cursor of Doom. I should be able to figure it out, but it would be exponentially easier to just install to the the SSD and call it a day. Currently I'm using 3GB of the 1TB Constellation drive, so that seems kind of wasteful.

 

[GMcDonnell]

I've used a Samsung 840 Evo as a boot drive connected to various SATA ports on the PowerEdge T110ii, T320 and T620 - works great. On the T110ii I tried it on all of the ports just out of curiousity and it booted fine from all of them. The T110ii has an Intel C202 chipset by the way.

Side question: are you trying to boot Windows Server from the internal USB port? If so try a SanDisk Extreme flash drive (http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extre...4999&sr=8-5&keywords=64gb+sandisk+extreme+pro) via the utility WinToUSB (http://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/). I preformat the drive with a small system partition and the rest for the boot partition.

 

[iroc409]

I've used a Samsung 840 Evo as a boot drive connected to various SATA ports on the PowerEdge T110ii, T320 and T620 - works great. On the T110ii I tried it on all of the ports just out of curiousity and it booted fine from all of them. The T110ii has an Intel C202 chipset by the way.

Side question: are you trying to boot Windows Server from the internal USB port? If so try a SanDisk Extreme flash drive (http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extre...4999&sr=8-5&keywords=64gb+sandisk+extreme+pro) via the utility WinToUSB (http://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/). I preformat the drive with a small system partition and the rest for the boot partition.

I bought two of those exact USB drives to use to boot a couple of devices (including the server), but I have the 16GB version. They are very fast.

I am running FreeBSD 10. I can boot from the USB to install something no problem. I've tried both FreeBSD and Windows. However, if I install FreeBSD from DVD to the internal USB stick using the installer, it installs fine and just boots to the cursor. It seems it's not an uncommon first-boot condition for FreeBSD, but can be a pain to fix. I installed a virtual FreeBSD on my desktop and was doing a buildworld to try to install a kernel manually to the USB stick, but accidentally hosed up my VM and sort of gave up.

But, it sounds like the SSD will work just fine. Still way more space than I need with a 128Gb SSD, but I got one of those $50 SanDisks recently.