SSD in HP Compaq 8200 Elite SFF (success)

[OlegR]

The very first note - everything went pretty well.

My system - HP Compaq 8200 Elite SFF, Intel i5-2500 3.3GHz, 12 GB RAM, no Graphics card, BIOS v2.32, Windows 10 pro.

At the moment of installation:

- SATA0 (SATA-3) dark blue connector: boot WD Blue 500GB (original HDD)

- SATA1 (SATA-3) light blue connector: Seagate Barracuda 2TB

- SATA2 (SATA-2) white connector: HP CDDVDW (original optical drive)

My SSD kit included the following:

- HP #917924-001 (actually Micron 1100) M.2 SATA-3 256 GB board - new for $38 including shipment from Ebay.

- SilverStone SST-ECM20 PCIe adapter card - new for $18 with free shipment from Amazon.

- PI Manufacturing 6 inch SATA-3 cable with locking latch - new for $4 with free shipment from Ebay.

So, I downloaded Windows 10 installation media tool from Microsoft web-site and took ISO Windows file.

Burned it to DVD-R disk.

Installed SSD M.2 board into SST-ECM20 adapter card. NOTE. It not clear, which side of SSD M.2 board should be upside. Actually, it is side with chips on it and Micron label.

Installed SST-ECM20 adapter card into X4PCIEXP (x16 downshifted to a x4) expansion card slot of my computer.

Switched WD Blue 500GB cable from SATA0 to ESATA black connector. NOTE. While HP documentation indicates black connector as eSATA, it is actually plain SATA (SATA-2?) connector. So, you did not need some special cable.

Connected 6 inch SATA-3 cable from SATA0 to SATA connector on adapter card.

Powered on my PC, hitting Esc button, and choose optical drive as boot.

Choose drive0 as boot.

Voilà!

[SDH]

That PCIe card has two sockets for holding up to two M.2 drives.... but only one can interface with the PIC bus (allowing use of PCIe speeds), but the second socket only passes data at SATA speed... it has a M.2 to SATA adapter. 

That second socket is what you're using, with I/O to/from your M.2 drive going through your new 6" SATA cable.  This means your M.2 drive is not running via the PCIe bus (not running at PCIe speeds).  Why did you not just get a nice fast new boot SSD instead, if you end up running at SATA speeds?  I thought running at PCIe speeds was the goal of M.2 drives...

[DGroves]

 the 8200 elite (original model) is not UEFI/NVME capable, "SDH" is correct that the best choice would be a SATA based 2.5in SSD  for this model  using a 2.5 to 3.5 HD adapter since it lacks UEFI/NVME support,

 this model  (SFF) only has  one 16x and one 1x pci-e slot per the HP specs

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c02781693

https://www.levnapc.cz/ProductsFiles/HP-8200-Elite-manual-en.pdf

and the microtower appears to be the same board with the same slot layout

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-compaq-8200-elite-microtower-pc/5037940/document/c02779504

[OlegR]

SDH> Why did you not just get a nice fast new boot SSD instead

DGroves is right. It is too old model and you cannot boot from NVMe SSD, only from SATA. Nevertheless speed significantly increased: boot time from about 30 seconds to 10, other applications also start much faster. I felt the most noticeable improvement in MS Visual Studio, it worked painfully slow before.

DGroves> the best choice would be a SATA based 2.5in SSD

Unfortunately I have no free drive bay. I could remove one of my SATA drives, but I still need them all:

1. There are some reliability concerns with SSD. I avoid putting something critical on it.

2. Seagate Barracuda is too noisy and I use WD Blue as the storage for my everyday needs.

3. I use Seagate Barracuda as "garbage" space and as backup drive.

4. I still occasionally use optical drive.

While I had two unused PCIe slots (1x slot is already occupied by USB-3 adapter card), I utilized one of them as SSD bay.

DGroves> this model (SFF) only has  one 16x and one 1x pci-e slot

No. For example, the link you provided indicates

• 1 low-profile PCIe x1
• 2 low-profile PCIe x16

Actually one of PCIe x16 slots is downshifted to a x4, I made use of it for my new SSD adapter card.

[DGroves]

six to eight years ago some consumer ssd's may have had some issues with longevity but that has not been the case for at least the past five years current ssd's are just (if not more so) as reliable as a mech drive and considerably faster

i personally would install a SSD as a boot drive internally and replace all of the other mech drives with  a single 3TB 3.5 sata drive internally, and if more storage was still needed i would take one of the existing older mech drive(s) and place it into a USB based external drive enclosure

[OlegR]

Price factor: $60 vs $300. And I see absolutely no benefit from costly solution.

[OlegR]

After 4 months of use everything works just fine.

[davidg79]

I'm still at bios v2.28 becaue I heard  v2.29 would make booting up at bios hang for 3 mins.  I had that same issue on an older bios.  does v2.32 have this problem?  Thanks in advance.

[OlegR]

I'm aware of this problem. v.2.32 works just fine on my computer. But since I never faced the problem (I jumped from v.2.27 to v.2.32), I do not know if v.2.32 has been fixed or my PC configuration  eliminates the obstacle.