Single drive RAID-0 scenario

[peterbata]

Thank you so much for chiming in @SDH. I could use all of the help that I can get. Unfortunately, I do not have access to a Windows environment at the moment as I am running Vmware ESXi v.6.5 U3 on the HP 820. My 4x 2TB SATA drives work like a charm but was hoping to kick up my storage a notch by introducing those 2x 8TB HGST SAS drives. My gut tells me that it must be an imcompatability with, or a limitation of the Z820's onboard controller. I have no issues spending a few sheckles on the Adaptec card as I said but not before I know if those 2x 8TB are going to play nice.

[SDH]

Way over my head. I hope DGroves sees this post because this is one of his many areas of expertise.

[DGroves]

not all sas drives follow the 512/4k sector size standard

some sas drives from enterprise devices use non standard sector sizes the controller is unable to recognize

if you have the sas drive in one of the internal hotswap bays connected to one of the white LSI sas/sata ports located on the bottom edge of the motherboard and the drive fails to show in the lsi bios menu this may be the cause

post the sas drive's full model number and i'll let you know if this is the case

also some 8tb drives firmware do not play nice with the onboard LSI controllers' bios revision it is possible to force flash a newer LSI bios however it runs the risk of disabling the onboard LSI function if done wrong.

the adaptec 7xxxx series cards do not have this issue, they do however have a documented quirk that requires loading the cards driver twice during the OS install (which can be bypassed by slipstreaming the driver into the os setup)

[peterbata]

Thank you so much @DGroves. Immensely appreciated as always. And yes, I inserted both drives into the first two slots of the internal drive bay. I would like to have more storage at my disposal and had even considered the SATA version of the HGST 8TB drives as well. As seen here on eBay. However, I am worried that I may run into a similar situation with any of these enterprise drives. I am very confused at this point. In addition, if the below mentioned drive is not recognized on my system then I am stuck having to pay the return shipping cost.

HGST Ultrastar DC HC510 

As a sidenote perhaps it may be worth mentioning that my Boot Support settings in the LSI Config Utility is set to OS Mode only. The included pic is a little dated and shows Enabled BIOS and OS but that is not it's current state.

LSI Config Utility - OS Mode 

HGST SAS 8TB 

Model: HUH728080AL5200

P/N: 0F23746

[DGroves]

your SAS drive is available in several different configurations and as a SAS or SATA interface this is why i specifically asked for your drives FULL model number

https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/pro...

the LSI controller has no speed advantages over the intel standard sata controller except it will support sas 6gbps drives instead of sata 3Gbps drives

your 8TB "SATA"drive you mention is a SATA enterprise drive that is formatted as 4k sectors but emulates a 512k sector drive to the motherboard LSI controller as i said the adaptec controller (with latest firmware) will work with all currently known 4k/512k sector drives

https://www.disctech.com/HGST-Ultrastar-He8-0F23267-HUH728080ALE600-8TB-SATA-Hard-Disk-Drive

for this model drive move the hotswap bay cables from the LSI SAS 6GBps/SATA 3GBps  ports to the Intel "SCU" 3GBps SATA ports after loading the intel RSTe driver from the HP driver page for your workstation model if the LSI controller has issues

the 4 Intel SCU 3GBps ports are located next to the two grey intel sata 6gbps ports

[peterbata]

Thank you again @DGroves for having researched this on my behalf. A few questions / comments if I may:

1) In the case of the two HGST SATA 8TB drives. From what I understand I should only re-locate the hotswap bay cables if and only if my controller has difficulty recognizing them. Is that correct? At the moment I have my CD/DVD drive and my Samsung EVO 1TB boot drive plugged into the SATA connectors that are located next to the grey SATA connectors.

By the way, I did speak with the vendor and was told that they do ship their 8TB SATA drives with 512b sectors. This model which I may have already mentioned to you: HGST Ultrastar DC HC510 HUH728080ALE600 8TB SATA III 256MB 7200RPM

[peterbata]

I want to get back to the Adaptec 71605 Raid card if I may. From the sound of it this is what is going to make my life easier. I have come across a few and was wondering if I could send you those links so that you might provide me some purchasing advice / guidance. Here is one of the card that I have in my Watch List.

Adaptec 71605 

From the HP Z820 Quick Specs PDF I see that some models came with the LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i SAS 6Gb/s ROC RAID Card and iBBU07 Battery Backup Unit. Either way I would prefer to stick with something that is tried, tested, and true, And, will be compatible with Vmware ESXi 6.5 U3