Dell PowerEdge R730 Hard Drive Compatibility: Bays, Interfaces and Maximum Size

Dell R730 hard drive bays: which chassis you have

Dell's spec sheet describes the R730 with the Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 product family, and the server was sold in more than one drive layout, so start with the front of it. Dell's owner's manual describes eight-drive systems that take 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch hot-swappable drives, and a sixteen-drive system that is 2.5-inch only. Dell's spec sheet puts it as up to eight 3.5-inch bays or up to sixteen 2.5-inch bays.

The manual adds one rule for the 3.5-inch chassis that catches people out: only SSDs are allowed in the drive slots at the back. A hard drive belongs in one of the up to eight hot-swappable bays on the front panel.

Every layout takes SAS, SATA or nearline SAS hard drives, according to the manual, so the chassis does not narrow the interface. What you must match is the size of your bays: 3.5-inch drives for the 3.5-inch chassis, 2.5-inch drives for either 2.5-inch build. Dell markets the server with up to sixteen 12Gbps SAS drives.

Dell R730 max hard drive size

Dell's spec sheet gives the largest internal storage for the 3.5-inch chassis as up to 64 TB, built from eight 8 TB hot-plug nearline SAS drives, and for the sixteen-bay 2.5-inch chassis as up to 29 TB, from 1.8 TB SAS drives. Those are Dell's configuration examples. We have not found a per-drive capacity ceiling in the spec sheet or the owner's manual, so 8 TB is the largest size we found in Dell's own text rather than a proven limit.

For a drive larger than 8 TB, the Dell documents we read leave the answer open. That is why the tables below are not capped at 8 TB. Before buying a set of larger drives, check that your RAID controller and its firmware recognise the capacity, ideally by trying one drive first.

3.5-inch SAS hard drives for the eight-bay R730 on Amazon.co.uk

If your R730 is the eight-bay 3.5-inch model, start here. The table holds the cheapest enterprise-class 3.5-inch SAS drives per terabyte on Amazon.co.uk, up to 24 of them, priced in pounds inc VAT. It holds 24 listings right now, the lowest at £24.75/TB.

A drive appears here because its listing records 3.5-inch SAS, the physical match for the R730's large bays, not because Dell supports it. New and used offers sit side by side, each marked. Where the Recording column is filled, a maker document names that exact part number; where it is blank, we hold no such document.

3.5-inch SATA enterprise drives for the R730

Dell's manual lists SATA alongside SAS for every layout, so an eight-bay 3.5-inch R730 can also run SATA drives. This table gives up to 24 enterprise-class 3.5-inch SATA drives, cheapest per terabyte first. It holds 24 listings right now, the lowest at £20.49/TB. Our SAS vs SATA comparison covers what changes between the two interfaces.

2.5-inch SAS drives for the eight and sixteen-bay R730

The eight-bay 2.5-inch build and the sixteen-bay chassis both take smaller drives, and Dell's own example for the sixteen-bay chassis uses 1.8 TB SAS drives. This table lists up to 24 enterprise-class 2.5-inch SAS hard drives on Amazon.co.uk. It holds 21 listings right now.

At these capacities, compare the total price as well as the figure per terabyte, because the table sorts by the latter. If you are filling sixteen bays, the total for the whole set is the number that counts.

Installing a drive in an R730: carriers and hot swap

Drives go into the R730 in hard drive carriers. The step in Dell's owner's manual is to insert the carrier into the slot until it connects with the backplane. The bays in both the eight-drive and the sixteen-drive systems are hot-swappable, according to the manual.

The tables on this page list drives, so check whether a listing includes a carrier. Our used server hard drives page covers buying drives that have already been in service.

Dell R730 supported hard drives: fit versus qualification

A drive can match the bay, the connector and the interface and still not be one Dell supplied. We have not found a statement in Dell's R730 spec sheet or owner's manual about drives bought elsewhere, either allowing or refusing them. So there are two questions. Does it fit? This page answers that from Dell's documents. Is it qualified for your configuration? Only Dell or the seller of your server can answer that.

For the R740, see our PowerEdge R740 drives page, and for Dell servers more widely, Dell PowerEdge hard drives. Server hard drives compares drive classes for any rack server.