28 PowerEdge R730 and R730xd Technical Guide
6 Storage
The Dell PowerEdge R730 and R730xd provide storage expandability that allows you to adapt to
your workload and operational demands. With comprehensive storage options, the R730 and
R730xd offer various drive types, internal and external storage controllers, and different chassis and
backplanes for varied numbers of drives.
Features such as Express Flash PCIe SSDs and DAS Cache provide vastly accelerated performance
over previous technologies. Dell Express Flash drives use PCIe lanes to connect directly to the
processor and chipset and are easily accessible through a hot-plug drive bay (R730xd only; R730
does not support Express Flash drives).
Internal storage
The R730 and R730xd are available in hot-plug backplane options listed in Table 13. Note that the
backplane option must be selected at point of purchase and cannot be changed or upgraded later.
Table 13. Internal storage options
Storage controller options
16 x 2.5” SATA, NL-SAS, SSD
8 x 3.5” SATA, NL-SAS, SAS
PERC H130, H330, H730, H730P
18 x 1.8” SATA SSD + 8 x 3.5” SAS, SATA, NL-SAS, SSD
24 x 2.5” SAS, SATA, NL-SAS, SSD, with or without
optional flex bay: 2 x 2.5” SAS, SATA, NL-SAS, SSD
12 or 16 x 3.5” SAS, SATA, NL-SAS, with or without
optional flex bay: 2 x 2.5” SAS, SATA, NL-SAS, SSD
1
Back-accessible 2.5” drives are optional depending on configuration.
Supported drives
Table 14 lists the internal drives supported by the R730 and R730xd. For the latest information on
supported hard drives, visit the R730 and R730xd pages on Dell.com.
Table 14. Supported drives
1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 6TB 4Kn, 6TB 512e
1TB, 2TB, 4TB*, 6TB 4Kn*, 6TB 512e
300GB, 600GB, 1.2TB*, 1.8TB 512e, 1.8TB 4Kn*