SSD Samsung evo 850 into z820

[SDH · Accepted solution]

Basic first question for me...... was that new SSD raw when you bought it (they usually are) and did you know to format it via the built in Drive Management application?  I generally do that outside of the target workstation I'll be installing to, using another utility workstation.

Samsung Magician does not see the HP BIOS setting of RAID + AHCI as a correct setting, though it is, and this has gone on for years.  Personally I prefer the Intel SSDs and the Intel Toolbox software they have.

[Nemooutis]

Ohh sh*t , hang on. 

I think I didn't install the correct drivers after all. Sorry.

I've just double checked and have installed the ones you said in your last post. Rebooting now. 

[Nemooutis]

Ok, here we go.

In device manager the samsung driver has now been  rewritten to a Scsi driver (from the previous ATA Driver) And different location.

And it has now appeared as a unknown disk in disk management !

Nope,  not raw. I've bought it second hand, but it appeas to have been wiped clean.

When I  tried to performance testmit via samsung magician , it said, in red, "no volumes found on selected drive" .

So I think you have it - it's an unformatted drive right ?

And hence it's can't be 'seen' as a volume  ??  Lol basic question...err yep. Im a bit basic .

So" I must initialize the disk before a logical disk manager can access it."

MBR, OR GPT ? 

Jezus. I think we're almost there !

[Nemooutis]

[Nemooutis]

Ok, being that for now this will be a 1Tb media drive, and my other ssd has the  win 7 64 pro on it, and  win 7 apparently doesn't install onto GPT drives, so if  I need to  transfer over the OS and applications content onto the 1 TB samsung at a later date,  it make sense  to me that i need to format it to MBR now .

is that right guys  ?

[DGroves]

yes do a MBR format on the new drive

also, if you still have the win 7 recovery partition installed i would  from the start menu, go to the HP utils and create a windows 7 revovery disk so in the future you can reinstall the Os if nessary

also as i said previously, go into the bios and disable the LSI rom, this will speed up the boot sequence since you are not booting from the LSI controller

[SDH]

It is fine to have your boot/applications SSD on a MBR formatted drive, and your new 1TB SSD (I presume a documents drive?) formatted as GPT. 

I don't need to use such large drives, and recall that maybe that large they need to be GPT formatted.

When I get a used drive I run that in my utility workstation using DBAN from a bootable CD.... and do a low level format (a "wipe").  It does take a long time but that is why the utility workstation is in a back room.  When that is finished there is nothing left on the drive.... no deep hidden sectors, etc.  That is truly a raw drive again.

So, just because you bought your 1TB drive used does not mean it was formatted when you got it... sounds like it was raw as I suspected from the symptoms.  Then, for me, I do a long type default settings NTFS MBR format via the Disk Management utility.  That will take a while.... prepare yourself for that, over night, and don't use the quick option.  Long does different things.

Look up GPT vs MBR for the 1TB size drives.... it has been addressed here in the past.

And, you're almost all done.  I don't work with Z820s so can't give you tips on the ports to use.  It is there in your technical manual, and not all are SATA, and not all are SATA III.  You want that drive plugged into the proper SATA III port if you're needing that speed from it.  If you are keeping your original SATA SSD as your boot/applications drive make sure it is already a SATA III fast drive, and if you only have 1 SATA III port plug that original SSD into the SATA III port.

SAS is built into a chipset on your Z820 motherboard.  It makes setting up more complicated, but I figured it all out for the Z620.  I like having a SSD as my documents drive, but that does not need SATA III speeds for us, and thus I settled on an enterprise SATA II 500GB Samsung SSD for my home desk Z workstation.

[SDH]

DGroves is right.... if you have a HP Recovery partition (which you probably don't given that you probably bought that Z820 used) then you should hope it has never been used to make a backup (you can only do that once) and you should use it to make a single USB bootable recovery drive.  That is all pretty automatic if you read up on the process. 

Repeated F11 keyboard pushes during boot, 1 sec intervals can launch HP Recovery (if present).  Also looking at the partition table under disk management will show you if your boot drive has that present.  Used workstations generally have had their original HP HDD wiped.  If you can create a USB for this carefully save it.  I use 8GB quality USB drive.  Don't go too big on the USB drive.

p.s.  Make sure you are using the latest BIOS version.

[DGroves]

heres a few tips/info for z820 users

GPT format is only required if the boot drive size is over 2GB or if the partition is 16TB or larger

you  can run a MBR boot drive and a  drive/partition that is larger than 3TB however If you initialize the disk to MBR, you can only create 4 primary partitions at most. But if you initialize it to GPT, you can make up 128 volumes. 

also if you want to enable secure boot, you must be using GPT formated disks

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the 2 onboard "normal" SATA ports are sata 6GBps and are seen by all current os'a XP-win 10 using native MS drivers

the 4  intel "SCU"  ports are also sata 6GBps, but require the intel Enterprise RSTe driver to activate them through the motherboards c602 chipset. no current MS OS has native driver support for these ports a driver must be installed

note that the intel enterprise/consumer RST drivers are diffrent!!!!  x79/x99 chipset boards must use the "RSTe" driver set and not the RST set (note the "e" in the name)

the 7 ports on the edge of the motherboard are driven by the onboard LSI SAS/SCSI controller, only XP requires drivers

all later OS's have a builtin driver. these ports can work with SAS 6GBps or SATA 6GBps drives

the SCU/SAS ports while both 6GBps capable are diffrent, as each one is tuned to perform better at specific drive loads

in general, the SCU ports are perfered as they have the highest performance for random file access

the LSI ports are tuned for continus data xfers such as large video files

the default ports for the z820 are as follows

Boot drive on Grey sata-0

cd/dvd drive on sata-1

the 4 internal removable drive bays on the "SCU" ports

the onboard LSI controller should have it's option rom set to disabled to speed up boot times

disabling the rom prevents the controller from being bootable, but devices attached to the ports will still be seen/used by the installed OS

the same should be done to the onboard network controllers

unless your video card specifally says it supports Legacy/UEFI leave the video settings at the default legacy

if you select UEFI and the card does not have uefi roms, you will need to perform a cmos reset to restore video

i recomend new users download the HP enterprise driver pack for the z820, and extract it to a DVD or USB key for future installs this driver pack will have all the nessary drivers hp lists  seperate on their main web site

http://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/HP_Driverpack_Matrix_x64.html