HP Z2 Tower G1i Workstation Installation

[SDH]

NS777.... this has been a fast moving rewarding thread. Now I want one of those too, of course.

Yes, HP has been doing that for years now in the Z workstations. They provide a safe parking space built into the inside face of the black plastic front cooling fan holder (which also contains a stabilizing set of slots for the far front (rear end) of big long heavy PCIe cards. Some of the official HP cards come shipped with a metal plate that attaches by two screws to that far front (rear end) of the card to reach back (forward) and engage with those plastic slots.  😉

Way back I wondered why HP would be providing so much power to that front case fan... until I realized the supplemental PCIe power cable(s) just ran to a nice passive parking spot. Having those PCIe power cable plug ends flopping around inside the case is nowhere near as safe.

p.s. I don't think HP schemed to create a non-upgradeable Z workstation here. That computer is pretty new, and the manual will get updated in v2 and v3 like all the others. Plus the supply chain will get fixed. HP PartSurfer always has been expensive vs when things make it out to the usual HP retail channels. Never expect recently released new parts to show up on eBay unless you are very lucky. Finally, I think HP is preparing for a new era of only NVMe SSDs of faster and bigger GB/TB sizes just like we've seen with the fading out of floppy drives, FireWire, optical drives, Thunderbolt and on.

[RR_2]

Just a quick update, the B5DU5AA cable kit just arrived from CDW which cost $54.  In addition to the three SATA cables (one power and two data), the kit included one Hard Drive bracket ("P17383-001"), four Hard drive screws ("HDD ISOLATION GROMMET, LT BLU, ENVIRO" and "PN: 511945-001 QTY: 4") and Installation guide ("P62125-001"). The instructions include directions on how to install the internal drive (Bay 0) and external drive (Bay 2).

[dryodryo]

I was able to install two 3.5" hard drives even though the workstation only came with one flimsy plastic HD bracket. The optical drive bay isn't set up for accepting a hard drive without the bracket, but I was able to kludge a solution together with various lengths of screws, washers, and rubber grommets. The drive is only attached on the outer side, there's no way to access the inner side, and there are no screw holes there anyway. But this is good enough, and I didn't have to buy the drive installation kit, just the magic US$80 SATA power cable. The SATA data connections are, in fact, generic.

I would have bought the full kit, but it was out of stock when I went to CDW, and everywhere else. Guess I should have waited, but this situation was already dragging out to a couple of weeks without a solution.

[mdsmaxmax]

@RR_2

That sound promising. Have you confirm yet that the kit has the right power cable?  If not, could you post one way or the other once you know?

[RR_2]

@mdsmaxmax

Yes, that is the correct power cable.  I was able to connect two 3.5" 7200 RPM SATA III HDD's.  One is in bay 0 with the plastic drive holder included with the machine, the other in bay 2 with parts from the cable kit (you remove the external drive blank, attach the four grommet's to the drive,  slide the drive into the frame until it locks securely in place, and connect the drive bracket).