Can't Get Z820 to Recognize a New SSD Drive

[Czesc]

I wanted to upgrade my boot hard drive in HP Z820 to a Solid State Drive. I bought Western Digital Blue 3nd NAND Sata SSD (1TB) and plugged it in to SATA01 port. I want to install Win OS on that new SSD drive. When Win 10 installation starts I get a message that no drive has been found.  I changed the SATA Mode  to AHCI first, and when the drive still wouldn't be recognized, to IDE but the SSD drive is still not recognized.  I'd appreciate help in figuring out how to connect and make the SSD drive usable as a bootable drive in the Z820. Thanks so much.

[DGroves]

is the drive you bought a SATA or NVME based drive.......only SATA SSD drives will work as a boot drive on the z820

from a previous post on SSD drive booting (HP z400)

can a HP workstation Zxxxx workstation has been asked /answered on this forum more times than i can count

use this boards "search" function and read some of the previous posts

the HP turbo Z drive is a SATA based device,   the Turbo Drive G2 is a NVME based device

as a general rule of thumb, only Intel chipsets x99 or later will have the nessary nvme boot code

x79 and x58 chipsets lack this code, and unlike retail boards that allow user modded bios's to be installed,  the HP workstation line will not accept modded bios's due to the use of checksuming routines hp uses on the workstation line

1. only the workstations "AFTER" the z820/620/420/220 support booting from a NVME SSD

you can however use a nvme drive as a data drive

2. the Z820-z220 models can only use SATA based drives as a bootable device

3. no current SSD contains the "legacy" OPROM that some early nvme models had that included the missing nvme boot code in the ssd's onboard oprom (such as the sm950  or intel 750) these early ssd's are no longer available new

4. due to HP checksumming their workstation  bios's you will not be able to install any modded bios onto any current HP workstation, the current bios will detect the invalid checksum and simply ignore loading the modded bios, even though the flash program will say completed without errors

5. using the Clover or DUET, method of preloading the missing UEFI nvme boot code in theory should work, but has not been confirmed by anyone on this board

[Czesc]

[Czesc]

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply and to explain.  I swear that I have read over 30 threads on this subject.  My SSD drive: SATA SSD.  When I reconnect the old drive at SAS0 and connect the new SSD drive to SAS1, the SSD drive is visible in BIOS and in Windows.  Are you saying that the new SATA SSD drive should be available for Win 10 installation when connected to SAS0?  When I connect the new SATA SSD to SAS0 HP is not seeing it consequently I can't install Windows on it.  What am I doing wrong?  Should I just change the boot order (leave the SSD in the second slot)?

Once again, I appreciate your help.

[DGroves]

simple the windows setup does not have the nessary "SCU" SAS/SATA driver pre installed in the win 10 setup program

while you could fix this a much much simpler fix is to simply attach the SSD to one of the 2 blue native  SATA ports and run the windows setup and it will proceed without any problems since it has builtin SATA drivers the Optical CD/DVD drive should also be attached to the other blue port

the  2 BLUE windows SATA port is the perfered controller for the SSD 

the 5 gey "SCU" sata ports will only be available after the nessary intel RSTe   (as in ENTERPRISE) drivers are loaded

the 7 WHITE LSI "MUSTANG" SAS/SATA controller ports along the edge of the motherboard should also have native win 10 driver support

any further questions just post

[Czesc]

That's what I've been trying for a day now: I unplugged the drive's SATA cable from SAS0 port, plugged it in into SATA0 port (first of the two gray ports), and placed a new SATA SSD hard drive in the bay. And nothing: BIOS doesn't see the HDD. Why would the BIOS see the drive as secondary and the moment I move it to the SATA0 port the drive is no longer recognized?  Thank you for your help!

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

connect only the SSD, (disconnect ALL OTHER DRIVES/CONTROLLER CARDS) enter the bios does the drive show?

is Raid+AHCI enabled in the Bios? is Max eSATA Speed set  to 3.0

are you sure the SSD is a SATA drive and not a SAS SSD please give the full model information

look at page 33 on the service manual, the two Intel SATA ports are at #11

http://h20628.www2.hp.com/km-ext/kmcsdirect/emr_na-c03424977-1.pdf

SAS0 is usually the name for the LSI SAS/SATA controller port number "0"

SATA0 is the name of the Intel 2 sata ports

https://support.hp.com/bg-en/product/hp-z820-workstation/5225041/document/c04474148

last check that the onboard sata controller is set to be the first in the bios boot menu

note that if UEFI is enabled, then you will have two entries , one for UEFI and the other for Legacy

my personal prefrence is to disable UEFI, and only leave legacy enabled since my boot drive is under 2TB

if you are unsure of bios settings, you can select to restore factory defaults by powering off, removing pwr cord, then press pwr button for  5 sec and then press reset cmos button for 5 sec and then power on

the z820 allows you to save a "custom" default setting, which is why just selecting load defaults may not actually load the factory default unless the cmos is reset

[Czesc]

Bingo! I am not sure which of the following solved the issue:  1) 

"connect only the SSD, (disconnect ALL OTHER DRIVES/CONTROLLER CARDS) enter the bios does the drive show?" or 2) 

"last check that the onboard sata controller is set to be the first in the bios boot menu" because I think I changed both in BIOS at the same time but it worked! The BIOS saw the SATA SSD drive and I was able install the OS on it. 

I am really grateful for your help.  I would love to send you a bottle of your favorite liquid or a box of good chocolotes.  Please let me know your preference: [edit]

Once again, thanks so much!

Martin

[Marien1]

Hi, Thanks for this post...  It's what I'm lookoing for..

I have a Samsung enterprise SSD (SATA-600) to be installed as Boot-drive.

My questions is:   which hardware port is the best to use?    The:  AHCI-SATA - 6Gb  or the SAS-SATA - 6Gb?

In this post I read a note to set  AHCI to max 3 Gb.  This will reduce the data speed of the SSD. I expect it 

to be 6Gb.

At this moment my AHCI is not connected, two bays have a SAS disk, which I gone replace for this SSD.

[SDH]

Marien1,

You misunderstood.  The quote you refer to reads: " is Max eSATA Speed set  to 3.0"?  DGroves here is saying to not set the AHCI driver SATA port that feeds your backplane eSATA adapter to one of the other two options (the slower SATA I option or the None setting which also only gets you "internal" SATA II speeds but without the fine tuning HP did for eSATA technology).

In the Z420/Z620 there are only 2 SATA III AHCI-driver ports.  Things are different with the Z820 but my details below from experience with these lesser two workstations may help.  The two SATA III ports in those workstations are the ones on the front bottom motherboard's edge termed SATA0 and SATA1.  You want to attach a boot SSD (a SATA III AHCI-driver device) to SATA0.  Then you'd still have a second SATA III AHCI-driver port available (SATA1 on the motherboard).  You'd generally want to attach your "documents" drive (also a SATA III AHCI-driver device) to that.  You'd be using a large documents HDD or a reasonably sized documents SSD if you collect less stuff. 

The 2.5" boot SSD would usually be placed via a 2.5 to 3.5" adapter into the lowest of the 3 drive drawers,  In my Z620 this has "0" embossed in the metal on the right side, with "1" and "2" and "3" embossed in the metal by the next two higher drive drawers.  Ensure that the SATA data cable that comes from the rear of drawer 0 is plugged into SATA0 (for the boot SSD) and that the cable that comes from the rear of drawer 1 (for the fast documents drive) is plugged into the adjacent SATA III port (SATA1).

Back to eSATA ports:  These ports in the Z420/Z620 workstations can be set to run very slow (SATA I) or slow (SATA II).  They cannot be set to fastest (SATA III) because you only have 2 SATA III ports.... and you have used them up with your boot SSD and your fast documents drive.  The eSATA-enabled ports at least on my Z620s are SATA port 4 and 5.  I only use one eSATA port on my backplane, and set it to eSATA II speed, and leave the other of those two ports set to None so it runs at native internal SATA II speeds/technology.  From what I have read the SATA II internal technology on those ports is a bit different than eSATA SATA II external setting technology.

ODD?  HP says that in my approach the AHCI-driver SATA2 port (the uppermost of the two along the front edge of the motherboard) should receive the SATA data cable from the ODD.  Up is where the ODD lives, so that is easy to remember.

It all makes sense eventually.... go look at the motherboard schematic in the technical and service manual.

Of interest, you need to set SATA emulation in BIOS properly for clean installs to receive the correct drivers.  HP and Intel actually recommend you set that to "RAID + AHCI", but that is another story.