Can you put non-IBM hard drives in an IBM Server?

[feenster99]

Hi,
We've just bought an IBM x3200 M2 for a customer - it came without any hard drives. I'm trying to track some down to go in it, but can't establish whether they need to be IBM branded. A couple of sales people i've spoken to have mentioned that IBM server hard drives have a certain firmware, and that the Server won't recognise drives without this.

Is this nonsense? Could I put some Seagate SATA drives in without problems? I would try it, but the drives need caddies to be mounted which I don't have.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[feenster99]

Hi,
I've just spoken to a very knowledgable chap at our of our suppliers. Apparently, for all the big Server brands, you need to stick to branded PSU's, CPU's and Hard drives. RAM doesn't really matter - he advised to get some decent Kingston stuff.

On a side note, I plugged a Samsung SATA drive in and it worked fine (obviously no caddy though). Apparently though, the IBM monitoring software will moan, as the Caddy contains some chips to help with the SMART monitoring etc.

Matt