Replacing the storage media

Disposal of storage media

Delete confidential or technologically important data from the storage media before disposing of it. If a storage medium is defective, you must destroy it mechanically to prevent access to the data.

The old storage media must be disposed of in accordance with the national electronic waste regulations.

For new storage media, please contact your Beckhoff Sales only. Hard disks from Beckhoff are optimized for industrial applications. SSDs from Beckhoff have a considerably higher lifetime expectancy than commercially available SSDs.

Data transmission before replacement

If you want to exchange a storage medium according to Beckhoff's recommendation, you must copy the data from the old to the new storage medium. You can use the Beckhoff Service Tool (BST) for this purpose. BST is a graphical backup and restore program for devices with a Windows operating system. You can create an image of your operating system and use it to back up the operating system. Then you can restore the created image to a new data carrier. The BST is available on a bootable BST USB flash drive. This includes Windows and a backup tool. Select the size of the BST USB flash drive according to the size of the backup copy of your operating system. You can then keep the flash drive as a backup copy. For this purpose, the BST USB flash drives are designed for particularly long data preservation by means of special flash. For more information on the function of the BST, please refer to the corresponding manual.

If your storage medium is defective and there is no backup, Beckhoff Service can provide you with a fresh Windows image. For this to be possible, your Beckhoff device must already have been delivered with a valid operating system license. After installing the fresh image, the applications must be reinstalled.

Chapter 7.2.1 Access to device components shows how to access the storage media. Shut down the device and switch it off before replacing an NVMe™ M.2 SSD.

NVMe™ M.2 SSD

The basic configuration includes a 160 GB NVMe™ M.2 SSD on the motherboard of your device. Alternatively, you can order your device with one of the following on-board SSDs:

You can also install additional NVMe™ M.2 SSDs as PCIe® plug-in cards in your device. The total number of SSDs is limited to a maximum of six. The following ordering options are available:

You can mirror the NVMe™ M.2 SSD on your device's motherboard to another NVMe™ M.2 SSD in a RAID 1 array. The prerequisite for this is that you have inserted an SSD with the same size as the on-board SSD as a PCIe® plug-in card. This determines which PCIe® plug-in card slot is occupied. The following figure shows the numbering of the plug-in card slots.

Fig.34: Numbering of PCIe® plug-in card slots

The plug-in card slots are always fitted in the following order:

1. On-board M.2 NVMe™ (basic equipment)
2. Slot 1 (PCIe® x4 Gen4)
3. Slot 2 (PCIe® x4 Gen4)
4. Slot 5 (PCIe® x16 Gen4)
5. Slot 3 (PCIe® x4 Gen3)
6. Slot 7 (PCIe® x4 Gen3)

If you want to mirror the on-board NVMe™ SSD to a PCIe® NVMe™ SSD in a RAID 1 array, the number of SSDs determines the assembly sequence.

To replace the NVMe™ M.2 SSD on your motherboard, follow the steps below:

Hard disk replacement

You can optionally add hard disks to your device by inserting them into the hard drive caddies on the front of the device. The following hard disks are available:

Proceed as follows to replace the hard disk: