I'mhaving problems installing a Samsung Ev0 970 inNVMe device in my xw8600 workstation

[DBrunnenmeyer]

Samsung offers almost no straightforward information on how to install the Evo 970 NVMe M.2 device. After several dead endsattempts to figure out what to do next, I found that I needed to install Samsung's NVM Express Driver v.3.3. (This was not mentioned in any of the documentation that came with the device!). I searched and found the driver easily enough and followed their directions on how to install it. This procedure went pretty well; the device was then recognized in Disk Manager. From there, I then created a Simple Volume and formatted the drive. Then I assigned a drive letter to the NVMe drive (F:).

Following that, I used Acronis True Image to clone the original boot drive (a "regular" SATA Samsung SSD) to the new NVMe M.2 SSD. That seemed to go well, so I thought I was almost done.  I figured the next step was to go into F10 (setup) and change the boot order. However, the cloned drive did not show up as a boot option; in fact it did not appear to show up at all. I'm lost as to what to do next. Does this have anything to do with the RAID+AHCI and SATA settings for the two drives current installed in two of the xw8600 drive bays? What should I do next?

[DGroves]

i.ve got some bad news for you,.....legacy (non UEFI) systems can not boot from a nvme device due to the bios lacking the necessary nvme boot code

you can however use the nvme ssd as a non booting data drive, but some more bad news due to the xw8600 having PCI-e 2.0 instead of the current 3.0 spec you will not achieve the posted speeds but rather about half this is because pci-e 2.0 is only half as fast as the current 3.0 spec

booting from nvme was not a supported feature on intel based systems till the x99 and newer chipsets

one last comment, it is possible to use a software based nvme boot loader to add the missing bios code

search this forum for DUET/REFIND related posts or PM me directly

[DBrunnenmeyer]

I'm sorry but there's no way I could follow the instructions for using DUET/REFIND even if I had a Z820. Do you really need to start from scratch and install a fresh version of Windows 10 and then all of the applications in order to be able to boot and run from an NVMe M.2 drive???

[DBrunnenmeyer]

Please let me try again. A client of mine has an HP z820. From what I understand, it is PCIe 3.x compliant. That's good news. However, it seems that one still needs to "trick" the system BIOS in order to support NVMe M.2  as a boot device. Is that true in all cases?

Is it possible to upgrade the zx20 BIOS to support NVMe devices? If not, why not?

[DBrunnenmeyer]

Quote:  "booting from nvme was not a supported feature on intel based systems till the x99 and newer chipsets"

What HP workstation models natively support booting from nvme???

Thanks for responding and providing helpful information.

Dennis...

[DGroves]

go back and REREAD what i wrote

the xw8600 is never going to boot off any nvme device unless you use the DUET/REFIND bootloader

last, the DUET/REFIND boot loader is not machine specific, it will work on just about any computer 

installing DUET/REFIND takes about 5min, and is quite simple, if you can turn on a computer you also have the skill level nessary to create the DUET/REFIND bootloader USB Key

nvme boot support started with the "Z"x40 systems  such as the z840

PCI-E AHCI based SSD's will boot using the z820 but are quite hard to find nowadays,.... however there are other options

please "SEARCH" this forum for previous posts i have made that cover this and then if  you want to PM me 

[DBrunnenmeyer]

The instructions and links for DUET/REFIND were written specifically for the zx00 family  and then again for the zx20 family of workstations. There's a note that says to use the "2015 release" for the z800.

Is there a specific release for the xw8600?

[DBrunnenmeyer]

I'm not sure why some of my replies don't show up in this thread.

After several attempts to create a USB bootable key, I finally was able to complete the process of adding both DUET and REFIND to a USB 2.0 device. However, when I changed the boot order to boot from it, and  then rebooted, nothing happened. The screen remained black for a long time, interspersed with rare but random,  near-instantaneous flashes of what might be boot messages too brief to read. Earlier attempts to create the USB key failed completely when using a USB 3 device in a PCI-e USB 3 adapter. I received error messages about being unable to find BRB_FATSz16 and BRB_ FATSz32 because no no-zero number was found. It's all Greek to me.

Are you sure the instructions you posted apply to the xw8600?

Last question:  What does "if I want to PM me" mean?

[DGroves]

PM = Personal (Private) Message, in other words send me a private email using the HP site

you must use a USB 2.0 port, as add in cards like your usb 3 card get initialized/activated  after the DUET/REFIND bootloader runs

the directions i posted PLAINLY STATE that unless you have a z800 system use the DUET/RUFUS 2020 release

you need to set the xw8600 to boot from usb, to do this insert the DUET/REFIND key into a usb port reboot and enter the bios now in the drive options set the USB device to be the topmost listing, and save the bios settings

Read:

https://support.hp.com/sk-en/product/hp-xw8600-workstation/3432827/document/c01316837

if you have the  Bios set correctly for USB Key booting and DUET/RUFUS USB key correctly configured, upon power on it will boot from the usb key and display the DUET/RUFUS Boot Screen which is a picture of 4 blue squares very much like the  win 10 screen. if you get this your good to go if you get a screen showing a text listing of the usb ports, select each one in descending order till the screen blinks off/on  this indicates you have matched the DUET/RUFUS USB key with the port number the usb key is in

[DBrunnenmeyer]

Using the 2020 version of the DUET/REFIND package (I assume your reference to DUET/RUFUS was a typo), I launched USBSetup.exe and 'successfully' followed all of the steps to an apparently successful conclusion.

I then attempted to boot from the "Key" that I created, but on the first attempt, I received the following error message on an otherwise black screen:

Attempting Boot From USB Device

BErrorart!

The second line of text was bright red-orange in color.

Ignoring Einstein's advice that it's foolish to run the same experiment twice and expect different results, I took the same USB 2.0 device and went through the same USBSetup procedure from the beginning (Clean/Format/Boot/Duet/Refind) and took it back to the xw8600, I did in fact get different results this time. On the same black screen, I got this new, second error message:

Attempting Boot From USB Device

MBR Start!

An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain an operating system.

Press any key to restart.

The second line of text was bright red-orange in color.

There are two SATA drives in the standard drive bays. The first one (Drive 0) is an SSD that I normally boot from. The second SATA drive (Drive 1) is a clone of the first one. The third drive in the xw8600 is the 500GB Samsung NVMe M.2 EVO 970 drive on the motherboard. It is formatted as a usable but non-bootable data drive.

I first disconnected the SATA clone. No luck. I then also disconnected to SATA boot drive. No luck. Out of sheer desperation, I removed the  EVO 970 which of course seemed pointless, as I'd like to be able to boot and run from it. No luck. Each reboot attempt gave the same error message as the second one above.

As an aside, regarding  PM, I don't know how to access that functionality within the Forum. I don't see anything obvious that would allow me to send a message directly to you.

Dennis...