I have s bunch of those workstations at work. They are really great, but we put Blue-Ray drives in the 5.25 bay. I am happy to see someone else (besides me) that backs the screw up to find the old groves before driving it in. Nice work.
you could drill 2 more holes in those plastic brackets that secure the icy dock to be able to push it towards the back more that way they are recessed inside the chassis and not going through the front cover.
I didn't need the removable caddies, so I cheated and designed and 3D printed my own housing to take 4 x SSD and 2 x 40mm fans. Made my own cable to power the 4 drives, and an extra power connector to go through to the SLIM CD drive area as well. The existing 5.25" SATA data cable was then routed to be by the SLIM CD drive, where I then mounted a single SSD for my OS , the slim CD drive was retained.
Question: Does the 7910 support flex bays for the backside, similar to the 7920? For a potential total of 10x 3.5 drives? (6 in the front, 4 in the back)
I miss the part when the drives are detected by the controller. Maybe I'm wrong but I think the numbers printed in the chassis are not corresponding with the Icy Box disk configuration. Don't you? Could you make a video about this? Thank you very much for all your videos. They are plenty instructives.
I think you're right. the slot numbering at the front vs the IcyDock are different. I guess I usually don't care about the drive slot numbers. Thanks for watching!
The sata power connector is doing some heavy lifting in my 7910: 3 Noctua fans for my adapted Noctua heatsinks and an extra exhaust, the 2 bay SSD + 3.5" drive 5.25" kit from Icydock with 2 SSDs and 1 SAS drive.
Hey man I just bought this tower server and your videos are absolute gold. My only question is (and forgive me if you have already explained this) what is the maximum hard drive capacity I can put on this unit?
Glad the video was helpful. Be sure to see my other video using the official Dell kit. As to your question, that highly depends on the controller you use. If you're using the onboard controller, there's no practical drive size limit. For more details, watch my video here: th-cam.com/video/u55vIGMzzKw/w-d-xo.html
Here's a question. I have a T7910 but for some reason, ports 2 and 3 do not show any drives when attached. What should I be looking for in the bios? I have checked the cabling and it seems good. Currently, ports 0 and 1 have 4TB enterprise SATA drives.
I went to take a look at the part, but the P/N is not a typical Dell P/N, so I'm guessing this is a manufacturer part number, but here it is: 1B23LVG00
Just notice that even if the box accepts both sas and sata drives, it mentions in the details that it accepts max height of 9.5mm and the drive I have netapp 2.5inch driver measures as 1.23mm. Do you have any spare sas 2.5 hdd to inform me if there is a difference between sas and netapp drives in height? Thank you New edit: There are 2 models MB994SP-4S which accepts 15mm as you clearly mentioned in the video and the MB994SK-1B which accepts up to 9mm drives. That is why I got confused By the way for sas3 drives = 12Gbps is this box have any meaning since it supports 6Gpbs ? Once again official site spec sheet says Transfer Rate : SATA 3.0 up to 6Gbps / SAS 3.0 up to 12Gbps. So it is depending on the drive and not the enclosure backplane So I only left with the question of how can this enclosure support both sata and sas drives, since sas drives back side has power and data connectors as one (on the contrary sata drives have seperate connectors for data and power). I watched closely a video showing the inside of the backplane of this enclosure and it seems that it has a gap between data and power connectors (so more suitable for sata) Wont there be a problem that some pins of the sas drives won t be attached to the backplane? This I couldnt find anywhere as info
Hello. I hope you still offer replyes to commets :) I did exactly what you did, but i have a problem. I can see the drives in the raid controller, but i cannot boot from the drive connected like this. Windows is start booting, but then it crushes. If i connect the ssd to normal sata, it works just fine, but when is connected with the blue cabble into SAS port, it crushes while booting. Do you know what it may cause this? I also tried to connect the ssd, directly to the blue cable , without the 4x bay and the same problem. Also, when i connect the drive like this, i can't boot in bios anymore. What i could figure out, is that the bay it loses power when windows try to boot. it purely loses power at all. I presume the ssd gets the same problem when connected without the bay. Thank you very much.
I bought the official Dell kit for the T7910, in retrospect I should have purchased the ICY DOCK instead. The Dell drive trays are not designed very well, are cumbersome to work with, and feel cheap. I have an old T3500 with a flashed H310 and it is much easier to connect drives for short periods of time and leave them sitting on the HDD shelf. Others may have a different experience than me. In my opinion, putting an HDD into the plastic tray to be used in the T7910 is a complete pain.
Thanks! Reach out to me directly and maybe we can work something out. :-) The more stuff I can get rid of, the happier the wife will be. And I have no emotional attachment here. Lol
Since I ve run out of sata power connectors I thought to use the spare 8 pin connector upon the psu-circuit to a 15pin female adapter but I came across this: Is this true and if yes what else to do to power all the drives? (I have 8 drives and 2 ssds where I am dealing with the powering problem)
@@ArtofServer First of all thanks for trying to help here... so here is my case scenario..... On a Dell T7600 I am going to use 10 drives. 8x 2.5 sas2 6gps which will be installed at the upper (4) and lower (4) slots of the case (so 8 in total and I need 2 more). For the lower positions I am ok with cabling since that has been taken care of by the oem cable that provides both data (from the onboard lsi2308 adapter) and current from the spliced 24pin cable which comes from the daughterboard upon which the psu connects, At the upper 4 slots I ll use the icydock but mine has 2 x4 pin molex and not one like yours...... So my first issue is would I be ok to use instead of your 1 sata to 1 molex adapter a y cable from 1 sata to 2 molex (b.scdn.gr/images/sku_main_images/024003/24003071/20210304164156_cablexpert_6_pin_sata_female_4_pin_molex_male_female_cable_cc_sata_psy2.jpeg) and connect to the rear position of the icydock (see here .... www.mgmanager.gr/164492-thickbox_default/icy-dock-tougharmor-4x-25inch-sata-6gbpssas-hddssd-mobile-rackcage-in-1x-external-525inch-bay-mb994sp-4s.jpg) I just dont know if the one sata cable can power 4 sas drives.(I dont know if after the video you actually plugged drives in the icydock and see them been powered on and recognized by the OS/hypervisor ) Last I need to use 2 SSDs that I will connect for data on the sata adapter of the motherboard but I don t have a way to power them. Thats why the idea with the pcie connector to 2 sata connectors (By the way it is kinda wrong call since no 5v only 12v) SSDs may require only 5v (even if the cabling diagram shows all 3.3v 5v and 12v) but sas drives need both 12v and 5v (at least here www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/enterprise-hdd-fam/enterprise-capacity-2-5-hdd/en-us/docs/ent-capacity-2-5-hdd-ds1719-6-1505gb.pdf under power supply requirements). So can you come up with an idea how to power the last 2 ssd's and not burn or short circuiting the psu and motherboard? PS By the way the cd rom that could accommodate the one from the two ssd's has a weird mini power sata connector anc cant find an adapter for that (of course there are cd rom cases that accept 2.5 drives but then again it is only one of the two) Sorry for the long sheet post
@@ierosgr hey did u manage to solve your issue?? i am having a similar issue - my model MB994SP-4S also has 2x 4 pin molex on the back, and right now the only power cables available in my T7910 are either the 1 sata power cable that came out of the 5.25 inch drive or the spare 6-pin or 8-pin PCI-E power cables included in the case... not sure what our options are
Hmm, I have an old 1x CDROM tower case with 18 5.25 drive bays. With that ICY Dock thingee, I could install 4x18 drives.... 72. Right now I have it filled with 5.25 to 3.5 trays. Pfft wait these thins are $150, no thanks. I'd 3D print or craft something by hand before I bought even one of those. I must be living in the wrong forest, because money doesn't grow on trees in my forest.
![เจ็บที่ยังฮัก - ม่อน วรวิทย์ [ Official Mv ] จอนนี่มิวสิค](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KALIGSRSjFs/mqdefault.jpg)
I have s bunch of those workstations at work. They are really great, but we put Blue-Ray drives in the 5.25 bay.
I am happy to see someone else (besides me) that backs the screw up to find the old groves before driving it in. Nice work.
Yeah, screwdriving habits learned when I was a kid. Thanks for watching!
I love the Icy Docks... I have three in use for years now and they're perfect!
Indeed! Are you using this exact model or one of their many other ones? Thanks for watching!
@@ArtofServer I use the 4 drive and 6 drive 5.25" versions.
The Icy Dock looks really well made. Saw a used one for $50 on eBay and just bought it.
Yeah, they are well built. I do wish they used a toolless mechanism for the trays though. Thanks for watching!
Slapped one of those IcyDock cages in one of my Optiplex 7010 DT's for a few SSDs. It's really well made and not very loud at all.
Yeah, I ran that for most of this past year and it was silent. Not any louder than the rest of the machine. Thanks for watching!
i absolutely looove these workstations
This is indeed a nice machine 👍 thanks for watching!
you could drill 2 more holes in those plastic brackets that secure the icy dock to be able to push it towards the back more that way they are recessed inside the chassis and not going through the front cover.
Awesome tip! I didn't think of that!
Thanks for watching!
I didn't need the removable caddies, so I cheated and designed and 3D printed my own housing to take 4 x SSD and 2 x 40mm fans. Made my own cable to power the 4 drives, and an extra power connector to go through to the SLIM CD drive area as well. The existing 5.25" SATA data cable was then routed to be by the SLIM CD drive, where I then mounted a single SSD for my OS , the slim CD drive was retained.
That's awesome! Thanks for sharing!
Easy enough to drill and tap some holes to make it more recessed im guessing - Nice alterative kit , Good find
Brilliant. You helped my T7910 set up. Thanks man! also subbed!
Glad I could help!
Great vidéo as always...what kind of disks did you use ad what what was their throughput ? Thks
HGST HUSMM series SAS-3 SSDs.
Question: Does the 7910 support flex bays for the backside, similar to the 7920? For a potential total of 10x 3.5 drives? (6 in the front, 4 in the back)
I'm not aware of such an option for the rear?
I miss the part when the drives are detected by the controller. Maybe I'm wrong but I think the numbers printed in the chassis are not corresponding with the Icy Box disk configuration. Don't you?
Could you make a video about this?
Thank you very much for all your videos. They are plenty instructives.
I think you're right. the slot numbering at the front vs the IcyDock are different. I guess I usually don't care about the drive slot numbers. Thanks for watching!
The sata power connector is doing some heavy lifting in my 7910: 3 Noctua fans for my adapted Noctua heatsinks and an extra exhaust, the 2 bay SSD + 3.5" drive 5.25" kit from Icydock with 2 SSDs and 1 SAS drive.
Hey man I just bought this tower server and your videos are absolute gold. My only question is (and forgive me if you have already explained this) what is the maximum hard drive capacity I can put on this unit?
Glad the video was helpful. Be sure to see my other video using the official Dell kit.
As to your question, that highly depends on the controller you use. If you're using the onboard controller, there's no practical drive size limit. For more details, watch my video here: th-cam.com/video/u55vIGMzzKw/w-d-xo.html
Here's a question. I have a T7910 but for some reason, ports 2 and 3 do not show any drives when attached. What should I be looking for in the bios? I have checked the cabling and it seems good.
Currently, ports 0 and 1 have 4TB enterprise SATA drives.
Try out this video: th-cam.com/video/1dCd6IepB5s/w-d-xo.html
thanks for watching!
@@ArtofServer Will watch!
Can you share the Dell part number for the 5 1/4 drive mount brackets, thanks
I went to take a look at the part, but the P/N is not a typical Dell P/N, so I'm guessing this is a manufacturer part number, but here it is: 1B23LVG00
Fantastic! Thank you. Btw How has your experience been with recertified white label drives?
I avoid those.
Just notice that even if the box accepts both sas and sata drives, it mentions in the details that it accepts max height of 9.5mm and the drive I have netapp 2.5inch driver measures as 1.23mm. Do you have any spare sas 2.5 hdd to inform me if there is a difference between sas and netapp drives in height?
Thank you
New edit: There are 2 models MB994SP-4S which accepts 15mm as you clearly mentioned in the video and the MB994SK-1B which accepts up to 9mm drives. That is why I got confused
By the way for sas3 drives = 12Gbps is this box have any meaning since it supports 6Gpbs ? Once again official site spec sheet says Transfer Rate :
SATA 3.0 up to 6Gbps / SAS 3.0 up to 12Gbps. So it is depending on the drive and not the enclosure backplane
So I only left with the question of how can this enclosure support both sata and sas drives, since sas drives back side has power and data connectors as one (on the contrary sata drives have seperate connectors for data and power). I watched closely a video showing the inside of the backplane of this enclosure and it seems that it has a gap between data and power connectors (so more suitable for sata) Wont there be a problem that some pins of the sas drives won t be attached to the backplane? This I couldnt find anywhere as info
Hello. I hope you still offer replyes to commets :)
I did exactly what you did, but i have a problem.
I can see the drives in the raid controller, but i cannot boot from the drive connected like this. Windows is start booting, but then it crushes.
If i connect the ssd to normal sata, it works just fine, but when is connected with the blue cabble into SAS port, it crushes while booting.
Do you know what it may cause this?
I also tried to connect the ssd, directly to the blue cable , without the 4x bay and the same problem.
Also, when i connect the drive like this, i can't boot in bios anymore.
What i could figure out, is that the bay it loses power when windows try to boot. it purely loses power at all.
I presume the ssd gets the same problem when connected without the bay.
Thank you very much.
You might need to configure a RAID virtual disk and designate it as a boot device.
@@ArtofServer Thank you very much for your reply. So if i use this tehnique, i cannot use single drive for booting?
hi, is this a good dock to use: ICY Dock flexiDOCK MB014SP-B 4 bay 2.5" SAS SATA HDD Mobile Rack
I think that can work too, but I have not tried it. I don't know if that will support SAS-3, but it might.
Can we upgrade with 8x 200 GB 12 Gb/sec HGST SAS SSD ?
Yes.
Hey, will Intel Optane M.2 2280-S3-B-M 32GB NVMe SSD work in Dell T7910 ?
I'm pretty sure that is possible. You will need a m.2 to PCIe adapter for it
@@ArtofServer let me try
@@ArtofServer will it work in hp z840 ? I hv z840 workstation too…
Keep 'em comin' yo.
Like your vidz
Thanks for watching!
Great video, nice machine, I love me some Dell's :)
Thanks unkyjoe!
I don’t really know of ZFS Raid Z2 or Z3 works well on SSDs yet.
It works and is safe to use. Performance characteristics is a more complicated topic however.
I bought the official Dell kit for the T7910, in retrospect I should have purchased the ICY DOCK instead. The Dell drive trays are not designed very well, are cumbersome to work with, and feel cheap. I have an old T3500 with a flashed H310 and it is much easier to connect drives for short periods of time and leave them sitting on the HDD shelf. Others may have a different experience than me. In my opinion, putting an HDD into the plastic tray to be used in the T7910 is a complete pain.
I can understand your point, but the icy dock also has a tray that requires screws, so it might be even more cumbersome.
Thank you for this very useful video.
If you ever wanted to sell the dummy cover, I will buy it in a heart beat...I can't find it no where :(
Thanks! Reach out to me directly and maybe we can work something out. :-) The more stuff I can get rid of, the happier the wife will be. And I have no emotional attachment here. Lol
Increible Machine
thank you!
Thanks for watching!
Since I ve run out of sata power connectors I thought to use the spare 8 pin connector upon the psu-circuit to a 15pin female adapter but I came across this:
Is this true and if yes what else to do to power all the drives? (I have 8 drives and 2 ssds where I am dealing with the powering problem)
there are no HDDs that require 3.3V as far as I know. usually 12v is used to drive motors, and 5v to drive the logic board.
@@ArtofServer Which means am I safe to use the adaptor? ....... for example www.startech.com/en-us/cables/satpciex8adp
@@ierosgr Not sure... I thought PCI-E power connectors were all 12v + GND only? where is the 5v?
@@ArtofServer First of all thanks for trying to help here... so here is my case scenario..... On a Dell T7600 I am going to use 10 drives. 8x 2.5 sas2 6gps which will be installed at the upper (4) and lower (4) slots of the case (so 8 in total and I need 2 more). For the lower positions I am ok with cabling since that has been taken care of by the oem cable that provides both data (from the onboard lsi2308 adapter) and current from the spliced 24pin cable which comes from the daughterboard upon which the psu connects,
At the upper 4 slots I ll use the icydock but mine has 2 x4 pin molex and not one like yours...... So my first issue is would I be ok to use instead of your 1 sata to 1 molex adapter a y cable from 1 sata to 2 molex (b.scdn.gr/images/sku_main_images/024003/24003071/20210304164156_cablexpert_6_pin_sata_female_4_pin_molex_male_female_cable_cc_sata_psy2.jpeg) and connect to the rear position of the icydock (see here .... www.mgmanager.gr/164492-thickbox_default/icy-dock-tougharmor-4x-25inch-sata-6gbpssas-hddssd-mobile-rackcage-in-1x-external-525inch-bay-mb994sp-4s.jpg) I just dont know if the one sata cable can power 4 sas drives.(I dont know if after the video you actually plugged drives in the icydock and see them been powered on and recognized by the OS/hypervisor )
Last I need to use 2 SSDs that I will connect for data on the sata adapter of the motherboard but I don t have a way to power them. Thats why the idea with the pcie connector to 2 sata connectors (By the way it is kinda wrong call since no 5v only 12v) SSDs may require only 5v (even if the cabling diagram shows all 3.3v 5v and 12v) but sas drives need both 12v and 5v (at least here www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/enterprise-hdd-fam/enterprise-capacity-2-5-hdd/en-us/docs/ent-capacity-2-5-hdd-ds1719-6-1505gb.pdf under power supply requirements). So can you come up with an idea how to power the last 2 ssd's and not burn or short circuiting the psu and motherboard?
PS By the way the cd rom that could accommodate the one from the two ssd's has a weird mini power sata connector anc cant find an adapter for that (of course there are cd rom cases that accept 2.5 drives but then again it is only one of the two)
Sorry for the long sheet post
@@ierosgr hey did u manage to solve your issue?? i am having a similar issue - my model MB994SP-4S also has 2x 4 pin molex on the back, and right now the only power cables available in my T7910 are either the 1 sata power cable that came out of the 5.25 inch drive or the spare 6-pin or 8-pin PCI-E power cables included in the case... not sure what our options are
Couldn't you just measure how much it protrudes and just drill new holes to mount the plastic slide rails
yup. good point. someone else mentioned that here in the comments. I didn't think of it at the time.
Hmm, I have an old 1x CDROM tower case with 18 5.25 drive bays. With that ICY Dock thingee, I could install 4x18 drives.... 72.
Right now I have it filled with 5.25 to 3.5 trays.
Pfft wait these thins are $150, no thanks. I'd 3D print or craft something by hand before I bought even one of those.
I must be living in the wrong forest, because money doesn't grow on trees in my forest.
Those CDROM towers are great for building a drive enclosure! hard to find these days!
That plastic grill isn’t keeping anyone out, locked or not.
Yeah, buy the R7910 in the first place.... lol