Turbo Drive does not boot in Z820

[DGroves]

replace the HP pci-e card with a generic 4x pci-e card and the sm951 will most likely boot

you might also try changing the HP card's Id from the default jumper settings and try the other 3 card id's

[walter_f]

Hello DGroves,

I know this hackentosh-thread already, but I wanted to keep it "simple" (It's always the same thing: you want to save money and look for a 2nd hand solution, and then you'll end up with hours and hours of investigation, try & error, posting in forums et cetera... 😉

@SDH: I had seen this whitepaper before, but at that time I wasn't aware of the different Types of SSDs yet, so I overlooked the model indication "XP941"

So I think I can sum up : according to DGroves' "SM951 AHCI - experience", the HP SM951 AHCI-card  I found should work, despite SDHs objection...

Thanks to both of you for helping me!

Walter

[DGroves]

let us know how it turns out for you and which hardware config you selected worked for you so others can hopefully benefit from your experence

[SDH]

DGroves provides the answer.... HP changed later to the AHCI controller version of the SM951, and the PDF I posted the link to was from earlier.

The one I bought was not from HP.... for sure.  So, the HP firmware is the key to either of these being able to boot a ZX20 workstation.

If you can please scan the one you have that won't work and post a jpeg of that.  I have pics of my HP ones plus my non-HP one.

I bought one of the HP PCIe G1 adapters, bare, off eBay just to see if it had any magic in it for my non-HP M.2 I speak of.... and no luck.  It is a mighty fine but passive PCIe adapter.  I moved one of my Predator M.2 drives to it and that worked just fine when mounted on that adapter, too. 

I'll post my pics later.

[DGroves]

there is much confusion reguarding bootable M.2 ssd's for the z820.... below is what i have tried and confirmed on my z820

1. generaly speaking only AHCI/SATA ssd's will work as a bootable device,... while there were a small number of nvme ssd's that also contained the nessary legacy OProms, which allowed these nvme ssd'd to boot in a z820 they are no longer in production. known examples of nvme drives that could boot were the samsung sm950 and the Intel 750 pci-e card

2. the HP samsung sm951 came in both AHCI/SATA and NVME .......the way to determine between them is as follows

The AHCI version carries the code MZ-HPVxxx0   (where xxx is the capacity in gigabytes)

and the NVMe carries the code       MZ-VPVxxx0

3. the HP ssd kit comes in two versions, AHCI/SATA or NVME

4.the original "Turbo Drive" used the SATA xm941 and came without any heatsink

(or the SATA sm951 as a replacement after the xm941 was no longer available)

the  HP "Turbo Drive G2" is the newer NVME based sm951 and should also come with a heatsink for the ssd

both HP turbo drive kits  came with a custom HP specific PCI-E card that has jumpers to allow up to 4 cards to be installed in a z820 note that many people have reported issues with trying to use this card in a non hp system

5.the  HP ssd's use HP specific firmware, this firmware seems to be what allows the pci-e card to use jumpers for multiple card id's,.... the HP NVME ssd's may or may not work in a non HP system i have personally seen a  nvme 256gb ssd not work as a boot device in a lenovo laptop and then work fine in a supermicro motherboard as a boot device

6.the  HP sm951 SSD's,.... SATA or NVME can be used in a normal  generic pci-e x4 adapter as boot devices in a z820 or a generic motherboard, however as stated above the NVME version may or may not work/boot on all non z820 systems

the SATA based sm951 has no issues on any known motherboard

using a generic PCI-E x4 ssd adapter card will also allow any other SATA/Nvme drive to work, subject to the booting restrictions mentioned above

any NVME based SSD can be used as a non booting drive on just about any system made as long as the os has the nessary driver support win 7 requires ssd specific files to allow booting from a ssd but win 8.x and newer has builtin generic NVME driver support to allow a OS install out of the box

most of the above also applys to the hp z800, and their smaller z6xx and z4xx workstations

the HP z440/640/840 workstations do fully support booting from a NVME drive

a great link to ssd compatability can be found at the ramcity  help/info web page, while now out of date it nontheless still has solid basic information on what is now older systems

https://www.ramcity.com.au/blog/m.2-ngff-ssd-compatibility-list/189