Hi Matthias,

Yes, your controller and BIOS will support the new drives, but you will need an adapter to physically mount them.
Here are the specific details regarding compatibility and installation:

1. Physical Mounting (3.5" to 2.5" Adaptation)

Your current Seagate ST3300656SS drives are 3.5-inch LFF (Large Form Factor) drives. Your new ST600MP0006 drives are 2.5-inch SFF (Small Form Factor) Enterprise SAS drives.
Because the PowerEdge R210 II chassis uses fixed 3.5-inch drive bays, you cannot bolt the 2.5-inch drives directly into the existing caddies.
• The Solution: You need a 3.5" to 2.5" SAS/SATA drive adapter bracket (often called a 2.5-to-3.5 converter caddy).
• Alignment is critical: Ensure you get an adapter that aligns the SAS data and power connectors perfectly with the position of a standard 3.5" drive so it aligns seamlessly with the internal backplane or cable assembly of your server.

2. Controller & BIOS Support

Your new ST600MP0006 drives will work safely with the system configuration:
• Interface Compatibility: Both your old and new drives use the SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) interface. Because you are replacing SAS with SAS, your existing controller and cables will plug directly into the new drives (via the adapter) without an issue.
• Controller Support: The PowerEdge R210 II commonly pairs with controllers like the Dell PERC H200 or H200A. These controllers easily support 600 GB SAS drives.
• Dell Non-Certified Drive Warnings: Since these are retail Seagate drives rather than Dell-branded equivalents, your PERC controller or OpenManage software may throw a cosmetic warning indicating a "Non-Certified" or "Unsupported" drive. On older platforms like the R210 II, this does not block operation or performance; the drive will function completely normally.

3. Operating System Considerations (FreeBSD)

Because you are running FreeBSD without hardware RAID (likely using IT mode/HBA mode or ZFS), you will need to manually mirror, replace, or format the drive within FreeBSD once it is physically swapped.
• Ensure your data is fully backed up.
• Since the new drives (600 GB) are larger than the old drives (300 GB), you will have no issues partitioning them.