HP Z 440 - Windows 10 "embedded"?

[wny2016]

Got a Z440 off-lease, no hard drives. I plan to install a new pair, and as I recall, the last time I did something like this on an HP Z-class workstation, after I installed the Win 10 OS from a DVD, I did not have to go in and manually enter the Windows license activation, as it was somehow picked up from, I guess - the BIOS? Is this standard HP factory configuration?  Just wondering how this might work.

[SDH · Accepted solution]

EDITED A BIT FOR CLARITY... if your Z440 was sent out from the factory "branded" in firmware for W8Pro64 you still can use the HP Cloud Recovery site to download and install the W10Pro64 HP Recovery Install for no cost over the web. For that process you enter the requested "Product ID" exactly as instructed (it is on a label on your case) and the system checks if those are for a Windows licensed motherboard. Read and follow the instructions carefully... it is worth the effort.   If you tried to use that download of the W10Pro64 Recovery Installer on a Linux Z440 motherboard it would fail the automatic firmware check and not allow you to proceed. You can find your HP computer on the master supported list by going HERE and then use CTRL + F to search for Z440, and there is only one tic, in the W10 column. That will be for a W10Pro64 installer. This will be an older version of W10Pro64, but Windows Update then can easily update it to the most recent version.   To get started go HERE . The latest Cloud Recovery Client listed for the Z440 can be downloaded from HERE , released 3/25/22. The HP ReadMe for this is HERE . It is recommended to have a 32GB thumb drive ready to download onto.

Your concept is correct, but only if it was licensed for Windows at the factory. The installed OS would have been W8Pro64 or W10Pro64 depending on the stage of the Z440 release era if your Z440 was Windows-licensed. Some, however, are built for Linux and those would not be pre-licensed for Windows. In that case you could add W10Pro64 by buying a license from Microsoft.

A new thing you may not have heard of is the HP Cloud Recovery process. Again, if your Z440 was Windows-licensed by HP you can download a full Z440 HP W10Pro64 installer over the web. The nice thing about that is the build comes with exactly the drivers and OS install HP intended for the Z440.  You also can set your BIOS to factory defaults. Later you update that Cloud Recovery install via Microsoft's Windows Update, and you may also wish to tweak your BIOS settings some. The latest BIOS release is from 5/22 and updating to the latest is recommended for security improvements and best function.

I hope you plan to install your boot/applications drive onto a 2.5" form factor SSD. Even faster but more complex is to load that all onto a Z Turbo Drive G2, which comes as a HP PCIe card plugged into slot 4 and carrying a M.2 form factor NVMe-controller SSD. I recommend a 512GB drive, regardless of which of these two form factors you choose. Running your Z440 off a spinning HDD would be a big step backwards.

Your Z440 is an excellent workstation and can be souped up as you go. 

Welcome!

[wny2016]

Thank you - very helpful info!

My plan is to install the OS and software on a pair of SSD 2.5" drives, using the built-in RAID1 configuration. Then I will most likely use another pair of RAID1 drives with a LSI SAS 9217-414e controller. I run enterprise-class SAS drives for most of my storage, as they tend to be very reliable and rarely fail within their useful operating lifetimes. The 9217 is plenty fast enough for my purposes.

[SDH]

Below is one of the HP labels on the bottom of my Z440 case, bought as a "bare bones" purchase that included a slow processor, no RAM, and no drives. Note the mention of Linux there. My motherboard was not "branded" for W8Pro64/W10Pro64 and as such could not use the Cloud Recovery method of loading the W10 OS. I went so far as to get another used motherboard from eBay but it too turned out to be Linux-branded. I ended up loading W7Pro64 from a spare system builder kit I had and then upgraded that to W10 no charge. It, however, is quite a bit less hassle if your Z440 can use the Cloud Recovery method.

Paul_Tikkanen here in the forum has posted on an excellent resource he found to assist in installing W11 on HP computers that are not officially eligible for that, and it is working very well for him including getting W11 upgrades when they are released. You may wish to search out those somewhat recent posts.

Here's my label, bottom case surface:

[wny2016]

Thanks. My usual HP workstation "tactic" is to use the S/N to find a very slightly used machine that's just come off-lease. This particular one has another year of the 3-year warranty left, so perfect for my purposes. It came without drives or OS, but as I would replace the drives anyhow, no problem there. I have another Z440 for the heavy lifting - Adobe Creative Suite; that machine has 48Mb of RAM, 2 RAID drive pairs and another SSD just for Photoshop cache.

The "new" Z440 is just for MS Office and email, so nothing too fancy needed. I'll add 2 RAID drive pairs and another 16Mb of RAM and I'll be off and running.

BTW, thanks for the tip about Windows 11. I have to admit that the last OS I really liked was XP 64  bit; the XW9300 with that OS installed still works!

[SDH]

There is a post on the W11 issue from Paul from only 2 days ago, HERE . Posts from some months ago by him do not reflect the details of the link that became his favored method to do the W11 update, which gets him the full W11 install on his older workstations and even the most recent W11 updates from Microsoft Update. W11 is getting some pretty good reviews by people I trust, and he is one of them.

One little tip from me... turn off "Fast Startup", a defaulted-on "feature" of W10 that caused us grief, and was not fast.

[DGroves]

the LSI- 9217 is a very low end  "ROC" based card that was a OEM product, it's performance under raid (even raid 0/1) is quite poor and abysmal under raid 5 as it lacks onboard cache/battery features the onboard intel raid options of the z440 is actually noticeably faster

the only thing going for this card is that it is cheap, and when using non raid firmware it's one of the best methods of adding more sata ports to a system

for raiding a SSD, you need something in the adaptec 7/8 thousand series or the LSI 93xx series

note that the adaptec cards while slower, do support Raid/JBOD at the same time unlike the LSI 93xx/94xx series which are raid only (no JBOD) the LSI 93/94 lines are end Of Life and as such can be found on ebay at reasonable prices same as the adaptec 81605/71605 cards

https://www.storagereview.com/review/adaptec-series-7-raid-controllers-review

https://www.storagereview.com/review/adaptec-series-8-raid-controllers-review

https://www.storagereview.com/review/lsi-sas-9300-8i-and-9300-8e-hbas-review

[wny2016]

Thanks for all of that info. I have reconsidered how I am going to configure this workstation: perhaps just a pair of2.5" SSDs in RAID1, using the onboard RAID controller.  This will probably suffice for now. I'll wait to see if I need more drive capacity, and put in a pair of 1Tb SSD units.

I just picked up the workstation: it has the expected set of 2 standard HP 3.5" drive caddies. I recall that putting 2.5" drives in those caddies requires either an adapter, of the expensive HP 2.5"-specific caddies. Dell and others make small plastic adapters that look like they might fit. Do you know of any simple way to mount the 2.5" SSDs in standard HP workstation drive caddies?

[DGroves]

 the normal HP 3.5 adapters 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/234578213524?epid=561855041&hash=item369df37a94:g:xsgAAOSwn8himqTQ

method using plastic tray 3.5 to 2.5, and trimming plastic sides into proper sized rails with Dremel/xacto knife

https://www.ebay.com/itm/403239013491?hash=item5de2eb0c73:g:eFcAAOSwYG9g0Fn2

this can also be trimmed to fit

https://www.ebay.com/itm/175219526112?hash=item28cbe5c9e0:g:5KkAAOSwIfJiQtlI

[wny2016]

Lots of fun there, I guess! Last time I tried to adapt a Z440 to hold a pair of 2.5" drives, I used a couple of those optical bay  "caddies" - HP 488505-003 Optical Drive Mounting Bracket, with a couple of plastic adapters I had sitting around  https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/bracket25x2

It secured the drives OK (they were regular 2.5" HDD) after a bit of fiddling.

I guess I'll get some of those plastic things you suggested, as modifying them a bit seems like a pretty reasonable trade-off.