NVME Boot on Pre x40 workstations (z820/800)

[DGroves]

i've spent some time with intel 750 and 3600 series SSD's on a z820 as boot drives and have reached a opinion that it's not worth it ,...............while they do boot there are several issues

the mass storage device must be in "EFI" mode

EFI mode prevents many addin pci-e cards bios from displaying when invoked

example: my Adaptec ASR-71605 Raid card fails to show it's config screen during boot

so i have to configure the card under legacy, then when done, reboot enter bios again and set mass storage to EFI and reboot while the adaptec raid card software works to configure some drive options you can't configure a bootable raid array  for a new clean OS install

this also applies to the onboard LSI controller,

and the onboard nics (if set to EFI)

(the above does not happen when using the software based DUET/REFIND nvme loader)

as such based on current pricing of bootable enterprise cards i can't really recommend them due to the above limitations/pricing

the AHCI PCI-E SSD's like the nvme sm951 and the nvme based sm950 pro, the APPLE "UBX" ssd's and the Revo x3 and seagate warpdrive ssd's are also overpriced but are plug and play so to speak with no known issues

the z800, is even more limited in nvme options, while DUET/REFIND will work, due to the pci-e 2.0 bus xfer speeds will be 50% of what the device can do on a pci-e 3.0 bus and only a handful of ssd's can boot from the z800 legacy only bios such as the Revo x3/seagate warpdrive

so a mid to high performance SATA ssd is the way to go on these earlier workstations in my opinion, unless you have or can get a cheap consumer/prosumer ssd and use DUET/REFIND, i recommend you skip these bootable enterprise ssd's unless you can live with the above limitations

[CMTan]

Hi DGrove, I am trying to contact to know how to configure the Z800 to boot nvme drive. 

I have followed your instructions from another thread on how to use DUET/REFIND to get a Z800 to switch transit from legacy to UEFI system and to be able to recognise the nvme device which has to be in UEFI system.

However, using the instructions in https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/HP-z800-booting-fr...

I downloaded install with  DUET (UDK2015) with REFIND included.

Following the steps in the installation from "USBSetup" , I clicked all the steps "Clean", "Format".."Duet" and "Refind" on USB stick.

Switch the boot sequence to start with USB first.

It starts up correctly with USB, but it got stuck at the memory test.

Please note that in the test, I have not inserted the nvme.  I just want to test that it works before purchasing the nvme. 

I cannot see the boot manager window expected from Refind.

Do you know what has gone wrong?

[DGroves]

PM me (personal mail) from this forum and i'll try to help

duet/refind does work....i've installed on on my personal z800 some time ago which has 48gb ram/dual cpu's

after the ram count finishes

you will only see the duet/refind boot screen listing the available usb ports screen once , after you select the usb port that has the duet/refind usb key this screen will not be shown again unless you move the key to a different usb port

and once the correct usb port is selected to run duet/refind usb key's nvme bootloader the system will simply power on load the nvme driver off the usb key and then say no bootable device or missing operating system