Is it possible to simply use a raid card just to read and write to hdds?

[ShadowTech01]

I got a used Dell Pweredge T320, and I want to use it for a NAS. I still have yet to install the os on it yet cause I'm not home yet and won't be for a few days. I'm going to install Windows 10 Pro on a SSD seperate from the raid controller straight to the motherboard. I want to use the bays to install some nas drives later and I want to be able to simply pull out a drive if I need to and plug it in somewhere else. I don't want my data to be striped across all the drives and I want to simply store data with some redundancy like a second drive is a exact copy. I will probably add a second ssd to be used as a cache.

 

Keep in mind that I know nothing about Raid at all, both hardware and software. Is what I want to do possible, and is it a logical move or is it a bad idea. If it can be done, how can I do it? I plan to use about 4 drives for now and may add more later.

 

I should add that I got about 5tb of data to be stored and I got more coming soon. I think I'll be investing in the larger capacity drives like 8tb each for now.

[WereCatf]

3 minutes ago, ShadowTech01 said:

Is it possible to simply use a raid card just to read and write to hdds?

If it has been flashed in IT-mode, yes; in IT-mode, it's not doing any RAID at all and just passes the control through to the OS.

[ShadowTech01]

Just now, WereCatf said:

If it has been flashed in IT-mode, yes; in IT-mode, it's not doing any RAID at all and just passes the control through to the OS.

How can I tell or how can I flash it to that?

[Jarsky]

So you want to use the drives independently? 

What storage controller is currently in the T320?

 

Some controllers can do JBOD (Passthrough) and some can be flashed with IT mode firmware which turns it into just an HBA (JBOD)

If you have like a Perc H710, then you can either configure each disk into its own RAID0 Virtual Disk, or you can buy a cheap H310 or something second hand off eBay to replace the card with an HBA. 

[WereCatf]

4 minutes ago, ShadowTech01 said:

How can I tell or how can I flash it to that?

Depends entirely on the card, rather obviously.

[ShadowTech01]

7 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

So you want to use the drives independently? 

What storage controller is currently in the T320?

 

Some controllers can do JBOD (Passthrough) and some can be flashed with IT mode firmware which turns it into just an HBA (JBOD)

If you have like a Perc H710, then you can either configure each disk into its own RAID0 Virtual Disk, or you can buy a cheap H310 or something second hand off eBay to replace the card with an HBA. 

This is what I got, no clue what to look for. Are these pics any help?

[ShadowTech01]

5 minutes ago, ShadowTech01 said:

This is what I got, no clue what to look for. Are these pics any help?

I just looked up a H310 on ebay and it looks exactly like my card. Do I already have that and am I pretty much set to go then?

[Jarsky]

3 minutes ago, ShadowTech01 said:

This is what I got, no clue what to look for. Are these pics any help?

 

Looks like an H310. They can be flashed to IT mode.

Disclaimer: there is always a chance you can brick the card but yeah....

https://tylermade.net/2017/06/27/how-to-crossflash-perc-h310-to-it-mode-lsi-9211-8i-firmware-hba-for-freenas-unraid/

[Jarsky]

You might also try going into the H310 configuration utility (Ctrl+R) and see if you can configure the disk as non-raid. 

I have an H310 but my Dell servers are packed away in storage so I can't check on mine...i think you might have an option to configure the disks as non-RAID. 

[ShadowTech01]

Alright, here is a update.

First off, thank you everyone. You all have been a big help and I appreciate the advice you all gave me. Thanks again.

 

Here is what happened. So I went ahead and decided to look around the bios first before I did anything major like flashing the raid card. Turns out that it had a setting where I could just turn the raid settings off and run it like a general sata hot swap tray. Made a few adjustments to the settings so it didn't complain on boot that there was no raid configuration. And bingo, everything works great! My guess is that the flashing the card trick would work if this was going into a custom ATX system. But since this computer was designed in the first place to have it, everything was built in.

 

I installed Windows 10 Pro on it with the seperate ssd and everything works out great. The drive bays are completely hot swappable and work perfectly and everything checks out great! The boot time is slow even with the ssd but that's just a perk of using enterprise hardware.

 

The only hurdle now is to get +24TB of Ironwolf hard drives. The system can handle 32TB but I'm taking it slow for now. Thanks again guys, and be safe out there.