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07-16-2023 07:44 PM
Good day. I recently got a HP Z620 workstation. I have anSSD and two SATA drives I want to install in the drive bays. The SSD is my C drive. Which of the drive bays is the C drive bay? Or, does it natter?
Windows 10, 32GB ram. Thanks!
07-17-2023 01:28 AM
where you place a SSD drive is up to you as long as it physically fits,
and has data/power connected to the motherboards 6_GBps controller SATA port/power supply
read the HP z620 service manual to determine where the 6 and 3 GBps ports are located
and which colors they are
07-17-2023 07:20 AM - edited 07-17-2023 07:36 AM
A bit of added info...
I'm assuming you mean a 2.5" form factor SSD and that will need a 2.5-to-3.5" form factor adapter because the bays are built for 3.5" drives. Many of us are using the excellent inexpensive one from HP. Search eBay for 654540-001 or 654540-002. Those are made by Foxconn in China for HP as are a lot of the other HP parts.
In the back of each drive bay is a special "Blindmate" receiver that exactly matches the SATA power/data male parts built into the rear end of 3.5" form factor hard drives (and also in the adapter noted above). They mesh together perfectly. From each Blindmate receiver a flat SATA data cable runs towards the bottom front corner inside the case. There are 2 gray SATAIII fast motherboard ports down there... all the black ones higher up are only slower SATAII. The gray port that is at the far front corner is the one where I attach the boot SATAIII SSD's drive Bay 0 cable. "SATA0" is printed on the motherboard by that port.
If you look carefully on one of the vertical silver metal sides of the 3 drive bays you'll see punched in it the drive bay designations... 0, 1, 2. Usually the Blindmate cable running from bay 0 will be plugged into the first most-forward gray SATA0 port on the motherboard but anyone can have messed with those cables in the past. They have labels on their ends usually. I then make sure the bay 1 (second) cable end is plugged into the motherboard's second gray SATAIII port, running to serve a fast SATAIII documents HDD. I run the bay 2 cable end (third) to a black port higher up (those are all slower SATAII ports). I run the optical drive SATA data cable down to the highest black SATA port.
That service manual has lots of valuable info but it wants you to waste your second fast SATAIII gray port on the optical drive. I've been doing it my other way for years now, and even have put in a large recycled 2.5" SATAIII SSD as the documents drive instead. That is a very fast combination.