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Technical rules for drives

Understanding the technical rules for drives helps you correctly install and configure drives in the system.

Drive installation rules​

The following rules for drives provide information that you must consider when you install a drive.

General rules​

  1. The drive bays are numbered to indicate the installation order (starting from number “0”). Follow the installation order when you install a drive. See Front view for more details.

  2. The drives in a single RAID array must be of the same type (as in hard disk drives, solid-state drives, and so on), same size, and same capacity.

  3. If your server comes with rear drives, always install the rear backplane first. The drive installation should be rear drive bay 16 → 17, and then front drive bay 0 → 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → 5 → 6 → 7 → 8 → 9.

Mixing rules​

  1. You can use drives from different vendors.

  2. You can mix drives of different types and different capacities in one system, but not in one RAID array. And when you deploy a drive mix, install drives of lower capacity first.

  3. Install NVMe drives in a descending bay sequence order, 9 → 8 →7...