RAID 5 vs RAID 6 vs RAID 10 compared from SNIA definitions and Dell, HPE and Broadcom controller guides: minimum drives, how many drives can fail, rebuild exposure on large drives, and which level to configure on a server.
SAS and SATA drives differ in ports, command set, error-recovery control and speed ceiling, not in the reliability ratings of same-family drives. This guide compares both interfaces from standards and datasheets and shows which drives work with which controllers and backplanes.
A Dell BOSS card is a two-drive M.2 boot device, not a general-purpose RAID controller. This guide puts BOSS-S1, BOSS-S2 and BOSS-N1 side by side on media, RAID behaviour, placement and serviceability, and maps every PowerEdge model Dell documents against each card.
The R740 and R740xd use different backplanes for SAS, SATA, and NVMe drives — and picking the wrong one is why a drive won't initialize. Here's every configuration, the Dell part numbers, and the controller that pairs with each.
