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I've heard of SATA, but "LFF SATA" as listed on HP's specs page (archive) is a new one for me.

What does the "LFF" bit mean?

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LFF == Large Form Factor == 3.5" hard drive

SFF == Small Form Factor == 2.5" hard drive

They had to start designating it since many servers and even desktops now are shipping with SFF drives to save physical space and/or cram more drives in.

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    Of course, they could have just said 3.5" or 2.5" and everyone would have known what they were talking about without making new things up :)
    – Billy ONeal
    May 21, 2012 at 13:38
  • I wish that were true...alas, in my experience, it is most certainly not.
    – peelman
    May 22, 2012 at 18:47
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    That's really it?? Can I just cram a consumer 2.5" drive in one of those fancy SFF drive bays and it'd work? (I know of the reliability and such difference between server drives and consumer drives)
    – Vincent Vancalbergh
    Jul 28, 2013 at 21:57
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    @VincentVancalbergh you're correct. Of course (for posterity and those who com after you) I will highly recommend not using consumer (aka: laptop) drives in server hardware, only use drives that were designed for the parameters of server hardware and lifecycles, and that includes firmware, as most consumer drives use firmware to maximize power efficiency and responsiveness, and not speed and reliability, especially important for RAID'd drives.
    – peelman
    Jul 29, 2013 at 17:51
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To complement Peelman's answer, here is HP's official documentation on the topic of all the other disk vocabulary that goes with LFF and SFF:

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Source/reference:

HPE Hard Disk Drives - a00001287enw - 15825 - Worldwide - V10 - 13-August-2018

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