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Install an SSD in the Optical Bay of a 13th Generation PowerEdge

October 14, 2019 by Paulie 8 Comments

Installing an SSD to the optical drive by on a 13th Generation Dell PowerEdge is really easy. The only thing you really need to know is that the bay is 9.5mm high. I used this caddy from Amazon.

I installed the SSD into a PowerEdge R330, it works really well. Here is the SSD Installed in the Optical Drive Bay:

Image of a Dell PowerEdge server with an SSD Installed in the DVD Drive bay.
The SATA SSD Installed in the DVD/CD Drive bay.
Front image of an SSD Installed into the optical bay of a Dell PowerEdge Server
From the front it looks just like a Normal Optical Drive

ESXi is installed on 2 x 32Gb SD Cards, the SSD is free to be used as a data store:

Image showing ESXi datastore with an SSD installed into the Optical bay of a Dell PowerEdge Server.
Image of Install of Internal SD Card Into a Dell PowerEdge R330
SD Cards being installed by a certified PowerEdge expert.

There is a second SATA connector on the motherboard and space at the front where you could install another SSD. But I haven’t tried that.

I haven’t used the DVD Drive on a Dell server in years, an SSD makes better use of the space. You could use it as a normal data store or perhaps a flash based read cache in ESXi.

Filed Under: How To Tagged With: Dell PowerEdge

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Comments

  1. Kashan says

    April 28, 2020 at 1:52 am

    I am looking forward to do this myself. Which SATA port did you use? The ODD one? Do you know if both ports are SATA 3?

  2. Paulie says

    April 28, 2020 at 10:13 am

    Yes, I used the ODD port. I don’t know what SATA revision they are, but I would have thought that they are 3. I don’t have the server anymore so I can’t look. It was a very easy upgrade.

  3. Ozkan says

    June 4, 2020 at 1:05 pm

    hi,

    I’ve R230 with same specs. 4×3.5″ hot-swap chassis. Could you please send me the cd-rom power cable part number you used.

    thanks,

  4. Paulie says

    June 4, 2020 at 1:23 pm

    I didn’t purchase any additional cables – I used the cabling that was already in place for the CD-ROM drive.

  5. Ozkan says

    June 4, 2020 at 1:48 pm

    Hi,

    Thank you for your reply. I don’t have CD-ROM, it’s empty. I’m searching the cable because of it.

  6. Paulie says

    June 4, 2020 at 1:56 pm

    Ah ok, I have a supplier that can tell me the part number. I will ask them and come back to you. What country are you in?

  7. Ozkan says

    June 4, 2020 at 2:17 pm

    Hi,

    I’m In Turkey 🙂 I’ve asked local DELL distributors, none of them have an answer.

  8. Paulie says

    June 5, 2020 at 10:44 am

    I asked mine and they said it is:

    YY94X – CAVLE ASSY ODD 2X3.5 R230

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