4TB drive on Z200 using PCIe SATA card?

[six_rabbits]

I have a new-to-me Z200 workstation that I want to use as a media server and home for my TV tuner (PCI slot) cards. Recording TV off the air consumes disk storage quickly, so I'd like to use hard drives that are larger than 2TB limit imposed by the Z200's legacy BIOS.

Will adding a PCIe SATA controller card to the Z200 workstation allow the PC to see the full capacity of hard drives greater than 2TB? I understand that drives > 2TB can not be used as the Windows 7 boot drive... but can I use larger drives if they are used only for storage?

Thanks for any help in getting the most storage capacity into the Z200.

[TheOldMan]

As long as the boot hard drive is a 1 or 2TB drive you should be able to add a 4TB data drive/drives using the available SATA ports already on the motherboard.  The manufacturers have work arounds so those drives will work as a data drive,  just check their support sites.  That extra SATA PCIe SATA controller card will probably work OK, too, if that is the route taken.

[six_rabbits]

I tried connecting a new 4TB drive to the exsiting mobo SATA ports, but had no luck getting the 4TB capacity. During boot, the BIOS lists the drive capacity to be under 2TB, same as is shown by Win7 disk management. 

Using a USB to SATA adapter, it was possible to initialize the drive with a GPT partition and a single NTFS volume of 4TB. This configuration was unreliable, failing WD drive diagnostics for errors, and the PC was unable to reliably read and write the drive. But the drive works fine when initialized and formatted for the capacity reported during boot, at just under 2TB.

This all suggests that the Z200 mobo's SATA controller limit is 2TB. Could that be the cause?

I haven't found anything on the WD support site and there's no response to a similar question I posted there. If they have a work-around to this problem, it's not easy to find.  Did I miss it somehow?

Thanks for your reply!

[TheOldMan]

I did some research to find more info.  It must be a problem with the Intel RST driver if the version is below the 10.0.  Check the driver version that is installed.  The one listed on the HP site for the Z200 is 9.6.0.1014.  The information I found indicated that the driver version needed to be higher than 10.0 for the controller to be reliable with the newer Advanced Format drives 3TB and above.

If that venture is not successful, then perhaps that expansion card would suffice but it does not state support for the big drives.  I found this card that the user reviews state that it supports the larger (4TB and 6TB) drives

[six_rabbits]

Thank you for doing more research. This Z200 workstation doesn't use the Intel RST driver or application. It has the "Intel Desktop/Workstation/Server Express Chipset SATA RAID Controller" which in turn points to the iaStor.sys driver file, version 10.1.0.1008 dated 11/6/2010. Clicking on "Update Driver..." informed me that this is the latest driver for this hardware.

The link to the card you mentioned in your reply didn't come through. Could you please try to post it again?

I found a PCIe SATA card using the Marvell 88SE9215  chipset which is specified as capable of handling drives up to 6TB. I've not found any solution that will handle drives larger than 6TB.

What surprises me is that the solution to getting big (>2TB) drives to work on otherwise "perfectly good" legacy hardware isn't common knowledge.  I can't be the first person to run into this limit who doesn't want to add another PC to the landfill. And I need those old PCI slots.

Thanks again.

[TheOldMan]

You are correct in the link I intended to post for that card did not come through, but since you have found one that does support large drives, that is good.

On the driver note: it might be helpful if you would post the Hardware ID for the RAID controller.  A driver expected to work with the newer devices under discussion should be of a later date than 2010.

While some legacy hardware may work fine with the newer large drives, that by no means that the majority/most of the older hardware can be persuaded to accept the newer large drives by means of a driver update.

Hardware old enough to have PCI slots is pretty old for PC hardware.  It might be more acceptable to use an external drive that has built in hardware to support the large drives either already in an enclosure or a NAS.

BTW: the most sure fire method to support those large drives was/is to partition them so no partition is larger than 2TB, but I suppose that is not acceptable for your situation.

BTW2: I do not have a PC or device, other than an external or NAS, that has a larger than 2TB drive.  Just my way of not having issues with these drives