Add SATA3 drives to HP Z600 workstation and be able to boot Windows 10

[smithma01]

I have a HP Z600 Workstation Rev C2 and I would like to add a PCI-e SATA 3 card that will allow me to run 4 SATA 3 SSD drives and also boot Windows 10 Pro 64bit from one of these.

I am not interested in using RAID as I just want the speed increase from SATA 3.

I intend to run SATA3 SSD's from whaever card I can use and then have 2 traditional spinning hard drives in the machines standard internal caddies connected to the mother boards SATA2 connectors...

Can anyone recomend a PCI-e card that will allow me to do this, and being able to boot from one of the SATA 3 drives is very important and I would also like to have up to 4 SATA3 SSD drives running at full speed if possible.

I will need a card that will be reconised my the HP Z600 Bios (which has the latest version) and allows the setting of one of the connected drives as a boot disk.

Any help or advice will be much appreciated - thanks

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

there are several issues you may not be aware of, they are as follows

the z600  only has pci-e 2.0 slots, as such the bandwidth is half of what a pci-e 3.0 system can do, so in order to have a addin pci-e card do/maintain 3.0 xfer speeds you will need a card that uses four data links (or more) which is only available with a raid card that has been flashed with "IT" firmware to become a "HBA" card 

install a lsi 9240 card that has combo raid/HBA)

or use a LSI-9210, 9211, 9212,  x8 pci-e card  with the "HBA" firmware will allow you to add up to eight SATA 3.0 ports that can actually deliver sata 3.0 data xfer speeds. this type of card can have either Raid firmware or "HBA" (Host Bus Adapter) firmware installed and when in HBA mode the card is no diffrent than those cheap pci-e  x1 sata 3 cards except for the fact that the LSI card will actually deliver the sata 3.0 speeds that those cheap pci x1 cards can't

so to recap, you want a 9210/9211 with the "IT" firmware (uses forward sff-8087 to sata cable)

or a 9212 which is a custom HP version of the above 9210/9211 that has four onboard SATA connectors instead of the normal sff-8087 connector and can do both Raid or "IT"  and is based on the LSI 9240 chip

or buy a LSI 9240 card (sff-8087 connector) that will do raid/IT JBOD modes

you can find the lsi cards for under 50.00

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-H220-6Gbps-SAS-PCI-E-3-0-HBA-LSI-9205-8i-P15-IT-Mode-From-US-Ship/192639...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Raid-Controller-9212-4i-629913-001-636705-001-Rev-0A/192831708624?epid=7...

How to convert the HP 9212 card to "HBA" mode (applys to almost any 9207/9210/9211 based card)

https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/hp-sas92124i.30412/

lst, when buying the sff-8087 to sata cables make sure you buy "forward type" not reverse type, cables as only forward cables will work when going from card to drive. reverse cables are used when going from card to enclosure/backplane

[smithma01]

Thank you DGroves,

I really appreciate the detailed information in your anwser and will no doubt follow as you have described!

Thanks once again!

Best,

Mark