How to get JBOD on HP Z800

[makterna]

I heard somewhere that HP Z600 and Z800 is a good way to get bang for the buck, so I bought one of each last year, as well as a bunch of 2TB video grade SATA drives, and I have tried to get the computer up and working ever since. I am starting up a business that needs to be scalable, and I need these computers for a special kind of video editing which uses proprietary software developed by me. I know Z600 and Z800 only support disks 2TB or smaller so I made the software so it will use JBOD (thus eliminating all the complicated CTRL-S and whatnot to get into a RAID BIOS). I selected Z800 because it has many disk slots. However it doesnt appear to be working as well as a normal PC with normal SATA controllers, it has a pesky RAID controller that apparently needs to be disabled. So after I installed Windows 10 on a normal SATA drive cabled to one of the SATA connectors and currently residing on top of the RAM fans, and making sure that the graphics card and everything works as I expect, I changed from RAID/AHCP to IDE but then my Windows 10 installation started complaining it could not find the boot drive (which is strange, Windows 10 is installed on the boot drive, there has been no other drive, how can Windows 10 even wake up if it is not booted from the drive). I was offered some repair options but did not want to risk destroying everything on my boot drive (I dont have a backup currently). Is it even possible to do what I want on HP? Am I even right to believe it supports 2TB drives at all, or is it 2TB max altogether in the whole computer? I do NOT want to use RAID, I want the hardware to be as straightforward as possible. Is it even possible to disable all RAID functionality on Z800 and just use it as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) and will it support all 4-5 drives that it has room and caddies for? (I also had a problem with the graphics card, I had to set the monitor to PIP mode and use two monitor cables to get full resolution, but one of them flickers in and out... That is a smaller problem though because I can migrate to another computer for development and everyday use, and just use the HP computers for production.)

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

i recommend you take the time to read the documentation that HP provides for the z800 such as the user manual and the service manual, they can be downloaded from the z800 section on the HP site

next, use this forums "SEARCH" feature it's most likely your question(s) have already been asked/answered allready several times

your statement that the z800 only supports 2TB or smaller disks is incorrect, the z800 can only BOOT or access non booting  2TB or smaller, drives under win 7/XP  however using GPT format that is part of win 8.1/10 you can use 4 TB non booting drives

the z800 has 3 different storage controllers, two normal SATA 3GBps ports

                                                                                    five Intel "SCU" SATA 3GBps ports

                                                                                    seven LSI SATA/SAS 3GBps ports

the LSI ports are usually used by high end applications as the LSI driver is a well understood driver that is available under most available operating systems, this saves the software company much time in support/upgrades as each version of their program uses the same driver code

there is no speed difference between the SATA, Intel "SCU" and LSI ports on the z800 so it's recommended for windows users to DISABLE the onboard LSI boot rom, which will speed up the z800 boot times and to also disable the onboard Nic(s) boot rom, again this will speed up the z800 boot time

note that disabling the z800 boot rem is not the same as disabling the LSI/Nic device, disabling a device removes it from the OS completely, disabling the boot rom simply turns off the devices ability to boot a OS, the device itself will still be seen by the operating system

changing the CORRECT RAID/AHCI setting to IDE is a incorrect setting, this is the SLOWEST setting and will limit drive size for non booting drives to 2TB or smaller

the RAID bios INCLUDES the AHCI driver, which is why it should always be left enabled

the z800 DEFAULTS to JBOD, so unless you actually enter the LSI raid bios from within the z800's bios and configure a raid array all drives will default to JBOD on the LSI/SATA controllers

last, if you are doing video related work i strongly recommend a add in Raid/JBOD card, like the ASR-6805T, this card runs on the pci-e 2.0 bus (which the z800 has) and allows up to 8 SATA/SAS ^GBps drives to be attached. the sustained I/O of this card is much much faster than the crippled onboard LSI 9240 style controller, and again faster than the intel onboard 3GBps ports

you might also want to install 24GB ram or more depending on your application needs