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Dell PowerEdge sc1425 and 850 maximum hard drive size (sata)

Hi all-
I just was able to pick up a couple Dell PowerEdge sc1425 and 850 servers.  They've come with 160gb sata drives in them, but I'm going to need more space.

I've read that there's a maximum size of 500gb for sata on the spec sheets, but I'm wondering if that might have been expanded with newer firmware.   There's only a $10 difference between Seagate 7200.12 500gb drives and the 750gb drives, plus the 750's come with a 32mb cache, instead of just 16.  Seems like a no brainer  - IF they're compatible.

I'd hate to buy a dozen of these drives only to find that they aren't compatible....

Anyone have any experience with these?

Thanks
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Thanks to both of you for chiming in.
Since the raid controller that's built in is really just software raid, I was planning on putting the bios into ATA mode instead of raid and just doing Mirroring (Raid 1) to protected against a single drive failure.  
Noxcho: were you able to get the 1tb or 750gb drives to be seen by windows in non-bios-raid mode?  I wonder if this method would work with the larger drives.  If you've got some extra drives - you could donate them to the charity that I work for....
ComputeraTechie: This charity's budget isn't going to allow for the purchase of several multi-hundred dollar controllers.  Do you have any recommendations for quality but very low cost controllers?
I'd LOVE to be able to use ESXi (v4) on these boxes with Raid 1 handled by the host.  I know that's not possible with the built in controller, so I was going to use vmware server over windows server to get around it.  So if there's a really inexpensive sata raid controller that's out there that's also is esxi compatible, I'm all ears.  (let me know if this should be a separate question)
Thanks
 
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Thanks for the input.
Thanks for the input.  Even the $90 raid controller isn't going to be an option - there's a bunch of these servers (donated) and the $90 charges will add up too quickly.  I'm going to see if it's acceptable performance with some seagate 7200.12 750gb drives in Raid 1 software mirroring with VMWare Server 2.x