HP Z420 2To HDD

[dcabale]

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@TheOldMan wrote:

Looking at the motherboard picture, I would assume the two darker SATA ports are 6Gb/s but I am not positive.  So "I loose performance here -> would it not be better to replace my existing HDD (connected to the AHCI 6Gb/s) by the new SSD "?  If that is true , (the dark SATA ports are 6Gb/s),  then Yes.

Please watch these pictures:

from this Youtube tutorial -> https://youtu.be/MguqLS7o0jI?si=FeYG_LU8jZ_0eGfU

-> This confirm that the darker ports are the 6Gb/s ones

There is no real need for the data drive to be on a faster SATA port unless you are using it for video work or graphics rendering.

Here is a key point : I intend to use this SSD for storing and running a VirtualBox virtual machine (.vdi file). Do you still believe it's not worth being connected to a faster SATA port ?

The adapter you linked is a good kit for adding the SSD.

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Thanks for your confirmation

[SDH]

See my post just above yours... It tells you where to attach your two SSDs, and yes you want them attached to those two SATAIII ports. Those are gray. No value in attaching a fast SSD to a slow SATAII port.

Also, review the link in my post there about why it is critical to not leave your new SSD in a "RAW" state.

[TheOldMan]

I am not familiar with the actions of a virtual box as far as the drive performance.  If you feel better about the new SSD on the faster SATA, then by all means connect it there.  I would put the OS SSD on the other fast SATA port, too.

That would put the existing 1TB drive on a slower SATA port, but I doubt you will notice much of a performance difference on the data drive.

[dcabale]

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@SDH wrote:

You don't seem to understand that giving a drive a proper partition table does not mean that you're chopping its storage spaces up into different chunks. You really risk your data if you copy it over to a drive that has not been MBR or GPT partitioned first. If a drive is over 2TB in size you should use GPT partitioning. I use the Legacy MBR partitioning because we don't use client drives over 2TB, it is more compatible, and has never failed us in our enterprise here...

Excuse my ignorance here, but is a partitioning (whatever the method MBR or GPT) required for a secondary (not booting) drive ? If it is, how this must be done ?
Thanks in advance for your help

[SDH]

You have not said what your OS is. Let's assume it is one of the recent Windows versions.

Turn off computer, insert your new drive and its data/power cables. 

Boot into current OS and navigate to Disk Management. That will be listed in the dropdown you where you also can see Device Manager (in the Computer Management section). Disk Management will recognize that you have a new RAW disk in place, and you should just follow the defaults it offers. It will default to MBR partition table creation. When you get to formatting it will default to NTFS and Quick. Uncheck the box by Quick. Come back later... a 2TB drive will take a good amount of time. In your case you might not want to wait and might choose to leave "Quick" checked. Reboot. 

You may want to farm this out to a good computer shop.

[dcabale]

Thanks a lot to all of you, @SDH and @TheOldMan! Your inputs were very instructive to me😉

[TheOldMan]

Glad to help!

[DGroves]

all new drives ship formated as either fat32/efat32 as all current OS's understand these formats and you will not see any current consumer storage drives shipped in a "RAW" unformated state

doing a "FULL" format instead of a quick format on a new drive is not really nessary, however used drives might benefit from this as there were several revisions of the fat/efat/ntfs formats used on the diffrent OS releases

most people should format their drives in home computers/laptops from fat/efat to NTFS if using windows 7 or later

external portable drives should be left as fat/efat if swapping between systems

note that fat drives are limited to partition/file sizes of less than 4GB while eFAT/NTFS can use just about any size

you should only need to reformat/partition used drives, as new drives will not benefit from this step in my opinion