Upgrading the Z Turbo Drive

[wavetrain]

Have a Z Turbo Drive (the original I believe, sans heatsink) in my Z620, and am wondering if I can swap the factory Samsung 256 MB module with a 512 MB Samsung SM951 M.2 Gen 3 X4?

Thanks!

[SDH]

I'm sure you want to discuss only bootable M.2 drives here......

The original Z Turbo Drive should have been called the Z Turbo Drive G1.  It does not have a heatsink attached over the M.2 SSD stick, and uses a lower wattage Samsung AHCI-controller based M.2 SSD, with special HP firmware.  It runs somewhat slower and cooler than the current NVMe-based controller ZTD G2 (but the G1 is still very fast).  It will not work on non-ZX20 non-ZX40 HP workstations..... I tried.  The G2 is not supported on the ZX20 workstations, v1 or v2, by HP.  The G2 is only for the ZX40 workstations per HP.

The special HP firmware present on the G1 or G2 would not be present on a non-HP M.2 SSD, and the need for the finned aluminum heatsink likely would be present for a faster HP or non-HP M.2 SSD.  The HP cards are pretty small compared to other PCIe M.2 interface cards many of which use the card PCB as a passive cooler.

I have taken one of my ZTD G1 cards, detached its HP M.2 SSD, and attached one of my Kingston Predator M.2 SSD sticks to the HP PCEe card..... it works fine that way.  So, the magic is in the HP M.2 SSD, not the HP PCIe card.  I also ran the HP ZTD G1 SSD stick in one of my Predator PCIe cards.... worked fine too.  

You can sometimes find a ZTD G2 PCIe card without its G2 M.2 SSD stick on eBay, but usually too expensive for getting just the PCIe card part.  However, that is a nice piece of hardware, I got a good buy on one, and it ran both my ZTD G1 and my Predator sticks just fine.

I think what you want to do would work, but cooling will be an issue with your ZTD G1 PCIe card......

[wavetrain]

Thanks for the reply.

Apparently the G2 works in the Z620, but not as the boot drive. Will look at non HP PCIe boards, and see if there's something that takes the newer sticks that will also boot the Z620.

I'm not dissatisified with the G1, but if I can double the speed for a reasonable cost, it's sure a tempting upgrade.

[DGroves]

I have the HP z800 and a z820 and have the HP  "Turbo Drive" PCI-e ssd cards

(the HP G2 drives are nVME only, but use the same pci-e card)

in AHC ( xp941) SSD

and both AHCI/nVME (xx951) models,.....  IE-one of each

i have removed the nVME based HP 256GB SSD from the pci-e card and sucessfully used it as a boot drive in a late model supermicro xeon based system. this ssd was also used in a lenovo notebook as a secendary data drive without issues.

so it's not directly a issue with the HP SSD refusing to work, but with that said you might still have issues with early motherboards as the specs and the os (win-7) were not designed for this and there may well be issues with a motherboards bios and a specific venders SSD firmware.

what many people forget, or are unaware of is that the HP pci-e card can be configured via jumpers to one of

four diffrent addresses as HP allows up to four of the PCI-E cards/SSD's in a z820 at a time

i suspect that changing the cards default config of 0 to 2 via the jumpers might allow the card to work in non HP systems and if i get the free time i might test this out

[bivoy]

If you got G1 turbo drive installed properly, you will not get double speed on newer NVME (turbo drive G2) version, G1 was like 1.5GB/sec continous read already