Setting up a SSD Boot Drive
System came with Perc H310 Card, (2) 800GB SAS Drives, (1) 120GB SAS Drive
The 120GB drive has Win10. the (2) 800GB Drives are Mirrored.
I want to put in a SSD as my Boot drive/software. Don't I need a SAS SSD? I found a 800GB one on ebay, Dell Sandisk 800GB SLC 6Gb/s SAS 2.5" Solid State Drive- DPF1J / 5Y05N for $125. This should work? Is this the best way to go? Install Tips?
Thanks!
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Hello there!
You can use either a SATA or SAS SSD for your boot drive. Either will still be faster than the HDDs that's there now. SAS do have the added benefit of being true bi-directional when accessing data and there's nothing else special you need to do aside from installing your OS like normal.
Depending on how fast you want to boot into your machine, you can go straight SATA SSD and bypass (and remove) the controller for quicker booting, but if you keep keep the controller in there, then I would suggest just sticking with a SAS SSD for booting if cost isn't a concern. -
Get rid of the Perc and use a SATA SSD for your boot drive.
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If I go SATA, I lose the 3 SAS drives. Can I keep the SAS drives and add a SATA SSD to boot from? I assume the SATA would not be plug and pray like the 3 removable SAS drives. I assume it would have a different connector. What/Where would I put the SATA SSD Boot drive? And what/how would it connect to the motherboard. It came with the perc H310 card and the cable connects to the 4 drive bays. Those drives are hard wired to the motherboard for power and ??. Thank you for your response!
Chuck
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charles w creed Yes, you can use boot from either SATA or SAS drives if you intend to keep your other SAS drives, just attach your SSD to your SAS controller, but you may have to tell the PERC which drive to boot from (I haven't used a PERC H310 controller in ages). Both SAS and SATA runs at 6Gb/s on that controller.
Also you never mentioned what your use is for your setup; Is it gaming or homelab, etc? Also what model of Dell is it?
While Dells do have SATA ports on their motherboards, to avoid any confusion, you can put the SSD (either SAS or SATA based) on the SAS controller. Note that POST times are increased because of the controller's PERC's on-board BIOS, but you should see some improvement I/O wise once you're booted into your OS.
Depending on your machine, I would suggest that you might want to upgrade to NVME for storage if and when it's feasible for you and use the onboard SATA port for booting. SAS is good (I still rely on it personally), but it was mainly made for large storage arrays or use cases where multipath I/O is required.
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