Need some old timers knowledge - new HDD in Dell SC420

[AtlantaBob]

I know that a while ago the Dell SC420 was the hot thing -- they offered those systems for a ridiculously low price.

I've got an old one that I'm thinking about returning to its intended use (as a server) but wasn't sure how it would do with a new 1 TB HDD. (To give you some idea of the age, this is a Celeron processor that we're talking about).

I tried the old Poweredge Forums (which have since been subsumed by Dell), and all I could find is one person asking the same question, with no answer, back in 2009. (http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/956/p/19286021/19523358.aspx#19523358) The other posts I've found on Anandtech show that some folks have a lot of storage in them, but it's not clear what size drives they've been able to use.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[airdata]

I would think a 1tb drive would be fine.... I'd be more worried about the celery cpu though if the server will be busy.

 

[mfenn]

As long as it has SATA, you will be fine.

 

[AtlantaBob]

Thanks guys. We got SATA, so that shouldn't be a problem. It's just going to be a (mostly-offline) backup server -- e.g. turn on, copy files over to, and turn off, so hopefully the processor won't be too much of an issue.

That being said, if I wanted to run Ubuntu on it, do you know of anything that I should be concerned about re: the new 4K sector size versus the older 512 size? Thanks!

 

[mfenn]

Thanks guys. We got SATA, so that shouldn't be a problem. It's just going to be a (mostly-offline) backup server -- e.g. turn on, copy files over to, and turn off, so hopefully the processor won't be too much of an issue.

That being said, if I wanted to run Ubuntu on it, do you know of anything that I should be concerned about re: the new 4K sector size versus the older 512 size? Thanks!

It should "just work" if you use the latest LTS release. There is a potential performance issue if the partition is not aligned, but there is nothing that would stop the drive from working.

 

[Paperdoc]

I'm not familiar with Unbutu, but it seems to me there are three ways to handle this alignment issue.

1. Avoid it entirely. Since we're still in the transition time, the "new format" HDDs are not the only ones available, so you could deliberately buy an older design that does not do this. After all, the real reason for changing to 4 KB sector sizes (from 512 B) is to allow the move to HDD's in future much larger than 2 to 4 TB, but you're talking about using a 1 TB unit. So the old design systems would be just fine for you.

2. MAYBE, as mfenn suggests, the proper version of Unbutu will do it all for you. Certainly that is what the newest versions of Windows do - use the "new format" devices properly.

3. Last resort, MAYBE the HDD makers have a utility for Unix systems that duplicates what they've done for older Windows- a utility that lets you structure the HDD at Partitioning time so that the older OS actually uses the new HDD properly.

 

[AtlantaBob]

Thanks everyone. That was my gut feeling, but I really haven't been keeping up with hardware enough lately to have been certain on it.

I noticed that when I looked at NewEgg, it seemed like a lot (if not all) of the highly ranked of the WD 1 TB drives were the new sector format (and a couple of people had made some comments about potential issues). Last question -- does anyone have any recommendations on a 1TB old format drive (WD preferred, but not required). Again, thanks.

 

[mfenn]

Thanks everyone. That was my gut feeling, but I really haven't been keeping up with hardware enough lately to have been certain on it.

I noticed that when I looked at NewEgg, it seemed like a lot (if not all) of the highly ranked of the WD 1 TB drives were the new sector format (and a couple of people had made some comments about potential issues). Last question -- does anyone have any recommendations on a 1TB old format drive (WD preferred, but not required). Again, thanks.

As far as I'm aware, none of the Black drives are "Advanced Format" drives. AF is prominently featured on WD's product pages for their Green and Blue drives, but is nowhere to be found on the Black drives.