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HP Recommended
HP Z4 G4 Workstation

Have a Z4 G4,  the 5.25" optical bay filled with the HP filler blank, P/N 915765-002. The rest of the upper drive cage contains the slim optical drive and the I/O strip.

 

I had an HP optical drive to HD adapter sitting around, HP P/N 488505-002, which apparently is exactly the same part as the optical bay drive adapter specified for the Z4, HP NQ099A. That is easily set up to receive a 2.5" SSD via the readily available bracket, HP P/N 654540-001.

 

But then, how to adapt that to receive an NvMe M.2 drive? There are lots of super-cheap adapters out there to do the trick - all pretty much generic, AFAICT. Just wondering if anyone's had any good experience with any of them? The purpose of this whole thing is to install an NvMe M.2 drive to be used only for Photoshop scratch drive - a very inexpensive way to improve PS performance, and a good way to make use of that otherwise unused space.

 

TIA!

4 REPLIES 4
HP Recommended

No such thing as a SATA cable to PCIe adapter. Nor is there one for a USB port to a PCIe adapter. There is an excellent PCIe bus adapter for inexpensive that I have working in a Z4 G4... it is the HP Z Turbo Drive G2 bought from eBay. I can run the most recent/fastest NVMe M.2 sticks in that but have not yet tried a PCIe5 M.2 stick. You probably know that the Z4 G4 PCIe bus tops out at PCIe generation 3 technology, but I can run a PCIe4 M.2 stick in that perfectly... it is backwards compatible with the PCIe3 bus on the motherboard, has a nice big surface area heatsink built in, and is a single-slot-width card.

 

There even is a HP Z Turbo Drive Dual Pro I have running in one of our Z4 G4 souped up workstations. It goes into a PCIe3 x8 or x16 electrical lanes slot (slot 5 or slot 4, respectively) on the motherboard and if "bifurcation" for that slot is set in BIOS to Auto or On at "x4x4" the motherboard sees the two NVMe M.2 sticks as two separate added drives. I assume you have two M.2 sticks already in their two on-motherboard M.2 sockets... Thus, in a ZTD Dual Pro you could have one M.2 stick as your boot/applications drive and the other as your "documents" drive... or one as your scratch drive. We've got some with zero other drives in place than in their ZTD Dual Pro card's two sockets as an experiment... very fast.

 

Here's a link to the 4th version of your technical/service manual:

hp-z4-g4-maintenance-and-service-guide.pdf (itcreations.com)

 

Here's a LINK to an excellent HP PDF on your workstation if you don't already have it.

 

I've posted a number ZTD Dual Pro articles here on the forum... there is a v1 and a v2... we have both and both work equally well. Those also are both single-slot width cards. The v2 is officially rated by HP for up to and including PCIe5 technology, has more cooling surface area, but I'm running PCIe4 sticks on the v1 with no problems.

 

HP Recommended

Hmm. The machine in question is running 2 x M.2 NvMe drives in the motherboard slots, RAID1 via VROC module = system/boot array.

The data drives are a pair of 2.5" SSDs running RAID1 off a Microsemi 2100-4i4e card.

 

I just  need a physical way of mounting another SSD in the machine, preferably a M.2 stick. I have used Z Turbo cards before for just this purpose - the Photoshop scratch drive.  If I have to, I'll just put a spare 2.5" SSD in the adapter I described. Speed isn't any kind of issue with a PS scratch drive, I don't think. I'll either just cable it to the motherboard SATA connectors (I'm not using any for hard drives) or hook it up to the 2100 as a non-member of the RAID array. 

 

 

HP Recommended

You're ahead of me with VROC RAID. My perspective is that you'd get a "Twofer" off the ZTD DP if you have one of those x8 or x16 PCIe3 slots free.

 

I posted a bit back on the options for the two front 5.25" bays you have free and there are even more HP options I have in my archives for that (only SATA3 speeds, however). Take a look HERE.

 

I have to say that we've been quite impressed with the speed of the PCIe4 M.2 NVMe SSDs even in HP PCIe3 workstations such as the Zx40 family and the Zx G4 series. I've gotten a couple of the ZTD DP PCIe cards for about 50.00 USD brand new by good searching experience on eBay (not including M.2 sticks). It turns out that HP has been clearing out the ZTD DP v1 from their shelves because the v2 is now in stock. Bifurcation turns an 8-lane PCIe slot into two x4 slots with a single BIOS click...

HP Recommended

I have used the Z Turbo cards in a couple of machines, but always just for Photoshop scratch disks. In fact, I just found a spare one in my retired Z210, so maybe I'll use that.

 

The VROC RAID module/dongle enables Xeon-based Z2/Z4 (and maybe Z6/Z8, don't know, as never owned any of those) machines to configure the two motherboard M.2 slots as a bootable RAID1 array. Without this module, the Intel RST software will not let you do this beyond a thirty day trial period.

 

The HP spec for this is described in the Z4 specs as 

"Intel VROC NVMe SSD Standard Controller Module", HP P/N 3FJ80AA, and the retail on it is about $250 - pretty steep! But a bit of sleuthing reveals that this is just a branding thing:  the actual part is just an Intel  unit, of which there are several variations. But in order to be able to recognize any brand of M.2 drive, you need the VROCSTANMOD. There are other versions out there that are also branded for specific MB manufacturers. The Intel module is about $105 these days, readily available. The one I just bought shows a mfr date of May 2023, so obviously very much in current production.

 

The whole idea in having a bootable RAID1 array is that in case of drive failure, a replacement M.2 drive is always at hand and recovery is pretty simple. Then the second RAID1 array (via the Microsemi card) provides the same level of integrity for the data drives. It's all in the service of keeping things humming along. All data drives are also backed up to our NAS as well.

 

† The opinions expressed above are the personal opinions of the authors, not of HP. By using this site, you accept the <a href="https://www8.hp.com/us/en/terms-of-use.html" class="udrlinesmall">Terms of Use</a> and <a href="/t5/custom/page/page-id/hp.rulespage" class="udrlinesmall"> Rules of Participation</a>.