Free SAS drives made a home server build much harder
Two free 12TB SAS became the starting point for a new build. The chosen machine was a Dell PowerEdge R240 with a Xeon E-2144G processor and 16GB of ECC RAM. The plan was to install and use it as both a NAS for file storage and a server for extra apps.
The trouble started because the drives use SAS. The R240 was the cabled version, not the front-loading hot-swap version. A hot-swap backplane and the right were bought to make the drives work, but the cabled chassis did not have the proper mounting points to hold the backplane in place.
The drive caddies also turned out to be wrong. The result is a that should be right, a backplane that cannot be properly secured, and two drives that still cannot be connected. The parts came from eBay and can still be returned, so the practical question is whether to keep trying to make this hardware work or change direction.
Key points
- The build started with two free 12TB SAS .
- The server was a Dell PowerEdge R240 planned for .
- The R240 was the cabled chassis, not the hot-swap version.
- The bought backplane, , and drive caddies did not come together into a working setup.
- Because the parts are still returnable, changing direction is still possible.