It's official: There was never any hardware-level RAID-1 support on G4 ZBooks 15 and 15u!

[Raider-1]

Has anyone ever succeeded in setting up a RAID-1 in a ZBook 15 G4? After many hours of fruitless attempts, I'm now convinced it can't be done despite  HP official specs listing hardware-level RAID 0/1 support for this device:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-zbook-15u-g4-mobile-workstation/14523295/model/14523296/docu...

However,  HP's own documentation on BIOS Specs for commercial platforms 2016-2018 i.e. Gen 3-5 says that RAID-configuration options in BIOS are only available for desktop devices.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06114605

Moreover, the readout from the HP Bios setup utility does not contain any RAID-options, hence it's no suprise they never showed up no matter how I changed the configuration.

I do know that earlier generation ZBooks had this function. I myself have owned a G1 ZBook15 where I ended up being able to configure a hardware-level based RAID-1 with two SSD's. Not with this G4 ZBook15 though.

Given the fact that I've explicitly bought a ZBook again because I wanted hardware-level RAID-1 support, I'm very disappointed as I'm now convinced that the RAID-support in the official HP Specs for G4 ZBooks is a labelling error.

So I'd be really pleased and surprised if anyone has managed to do this...

Thank you for your thoughts on this

[soccer_dan]

can you confirm which Zbook you are asking about? you mention zbook 14u G4, zbook 15u G4, zbook 15... they are diff beasts with different capabilities... The zbook 14u/15u g4 are the entry in the zbook lineup... According to the specs (HP ZBook 15u G4 Mobile Workstation Specifications | HP® Customer Support), it supports RAID ONLY on SATA drives... If you have NVME SSd, that would be an issue... Also, the G4 is now 3-4 generations old, and the BIOS document is generic describing features across a variety of systems over different generations, so you may be looking at a spec that may or not be present on your model

[Raider-1]

Hey Dan, thank you for your response. I'm referring to to the ZBook 15u G4. I have two SATA-drives, one in the 2.5" bay and one in the M2-slot. They are both recognized as SATA- drives by the Intel Storage RapidTechnology Management Console. The BIOS documentation I linked in my post specifically lists the ZBook 15u G4 as well as G3 and G5 ZBooks, so this looks very specific to me.

No matter what configuration I tried (1 or 2 SATA-Drives either in the 2.5" bay or in the M2-port), Legacy support on/off, HP Sure Start on/off), the RAID-option never showed up. This seems fairly consistent with the BIOS-readout I posted above which shows that there simply isn't any RAID-option to activate.

So for now I'm sticking with my interpretation that the product specs are wrong regarding RAID-support, maybe even for all G4-Zbooks. This is too bad because the G4 ZBook's chipset would actually be capable of RAID 0/1-support, but HP apparently didn't enable / include it in the BIOS. I also think that this is the source of the problem: The chipset has more functionality than HP eventually implemented in the G4 ZBook's BIOS.

[soccer_dan]

h/w RAID is an Intel feature and should be configured by pressing Ctl-I (letter i) at power on... that gets you to the Intel Raid firmware... The HP BIOS has no knowledge of the Intel RAID f/w

[Raider-1]

Over the years that I've been working as an MCSA, I've set up a couple of h/w RAID-1 on HP ProLiant Servers and as I said on a G1 ZBook 15 as well. In my experience, you need a prompt in order to access the Intel Storage Rom by pressing Ctrl+I. Once you activate the RAID-option in the Bios, the prompt will show after rebooting. So whether the option to enter the Intel Storage Rom is displayed is configured in the BIOS.

With this G4 ZBook there's no prompt and pressing Ctrl+I at startup does nothing. So unless someone has actually set up a h/w RAID on a G4 ZBook, I'm thinking claiming RAID 0/1 support on the G4 ZBook 15 sounds like false advertising...

[Raider-1]

So I just got off the phone with HP: There is no way Gen 4. ZBooks 15 and 15u will ever support RAID-1, since they only have 1 x 2.5"-SATA-connector and 1 x M.2 (SATA)-connector.

In my eyes, HP thus should have never claimed RAID-support in the product descritpion (which they do to this day...)

I feel let down: The reason I bought these devices was the RAID-option I was familiar with from the G1 ZBooks...the fact that they just "dropped" it while further claiming this functionality in the specs is very disappointing.