Is Dell R510 a good option?

[jgreco]

but to go the extra mile to disable it.

Well and the funny thing is that on other versions of the chassis, with the 8(?) drives and a CD drive, I believe they are enabled so that they can hook up the CD. :-/

 

[Chris Moore]

Well and the funny thing is that on other versions of the chassis, with the 8(?) drives and a CD drive, I believe they are enabled so that they can hook up the CD. :-/

It is kind of funny.
I wonder if the firmware for the other model can be flashed to enable the SATA ports. I would like to put the two boards next to one another to see if there was a switch or jumper that might disable it at the hardware level, but it is probably just as easy for Dell to cut a section from the code in the firmware. I just don't see why they would bother but it does make me curious.

 

[Chris Moore]

We know that USB devices don't work anywhere near as well. This is probably not a problem with a general solution, alas.

This is why I went with a pair of regular spinning disks for my boot pool.
Well, that and the fact I didn't want to spend for a SSD or SATA DOM.

 

[jgreco]

It is kind of funny.
I wonder if the firmware for the other model can be flashed to enable the SATA ports. I would like to put the two boards next to one another to see if there was a switch or jumper that might disable it at the hardware level, but it is probably just as easy for Dell to cut a section from the code in the firmware. I just don't see why they would bother but it does make me curious.

https://www.dell.com/community/Powe...2-bay-server-sata-bios-questions/td-p/3834732

It's very likely that Dell programs in an identifier into the board that causes it to identify the product subrevision, much as is done with LSI controllers to identify desired featuresets. In any case, it blows.