Using Samsung 970 evo plus M.2 SSD (256 GB) in Z240 Workstation as boot disk

[Yacine1]

Hi guys

I want to use - Samsung 970 EVO PLUS - as system disk (bootable) in HP Z240

• The first method is to install an - Samsung 970 EVO PLUS - directly in the M .2 slot

       2 - The second way is to buy -HP Z TURBO G2- and install an- Samsung 970 EVO PLUS -in it

Note: Note: I don't want to use an -Samsung SM951-  Is there any other choice? Such as

Samsung 970 EVO PLUS or Samsung SM961

[itsmyname]

@Yacine1 -- there is free software, such as Macrium Reflect, that you can use to "clone" the HDD's contents onto the M.2 stick.  Then, reboot the computer, and enter BIOS SETUP. Change the "boot order" to boot from the M.2 device.  If it works, you can either remove the HDD, or "wipe" it, and use it for "data" and for "backup".

Note that Macrium Reflect can also be used, say once a week, to "clone" from the M.2 onto the HDD, to provide a complete backup of your M.2 stick.

[Yacine1]

Thank you my friend for your reply, but I read some comments indicating that other hard disks (other than samsung nvme SM951) do not accept booting and you cannot install the main system on them
Have you tried it and succeeded in installing it ssd nvme on HP Z240

[SDH]

The motherboard does not have a native M.2 PCIe bus slot.  The workstation can run a specific HP-certified NVMe M.2 drive in the form of a Z Turbo Drive G2 (a PCIe card built to accept that NVMe HP M.2 stick), and HP tells you which PCIe slot to insert the card into.  You might be able to find one used with original M.2 stick of smaller size (say 256GB) via eBay.  The hardware and BIOS were tuned to work with that by HP engineers.

I'd make sure the BIOS was updated to the most recent version before starting this project.  The best way to update BIOS is from within BIOS.  It is well worth learning how to do that for safety.

[Yacine1]

Thank you but my Samsung SM951 for HP is old
I want to install a faster ssd like samsung 960 pro or 970pro or 980pro
Is there another way such as installing Samsung 960pro on HP Z turbo G2 to use it as a boot disk??

[DGroves]

the HP z240 should not care about which PCI-e M.2 card you use,... same for the nvme drive I don't think the z240 is unique it should follow the other zx40 systems in regards to nvme/ssd booting and the other models boot off of generic m.2 ssd's/pci-e cards

the slot for the ssd however may be important from a cooling/boot order standpoint the text below is from a previous post i made some time ago

the hp z240 tower and SFF models support both SATA and NVME pci-e 4x drives as boot devices

HP enabled NVME boot support in all zx40 models

as such the z240 tower can use the HP Turbo Z  (SATA) and the Turbo Z 2 cards (NVME) to boot the OS under win 8 or later (booting win 7 x64 under nvme can be done but i's not easy or supported by HP)

the previous zx20 line has only SATA booting support (no nvme) however you can use nvme drives as a DATA drive

From the HP quickspecs paper:

The HP Z240 TWR is capable of configuring up to 2 Z Turbo Drives. By default, the 1st Z Turbo Drive configured will be installed in the M.2 slot on the system’s motherboard. The 2nd Z Turbo drive will be installed via PCIe card into the PCIe Gen 3 x4 slot.

https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04760707.pdf

[Yacine1]

Have you ever installed Samsung 960pro on HP Z turbo G2 to use as boot disk?? Will he succeed?
I don't want to install the old (Samsung SM951), I want to update it to ssd NVME faster
I need an accurate answer, please, thank you

[SDH]

DGroves is correct... in the QuickSpecs for both the Z240 Tower, and the Z240 SFF use of a M.2 slot on the motherboard is discussed.

I had looked at the on-line HP specifications page for the Z240 Tower HERE   . and there is no mention of a M.2 slot.  Odd... but true.

[DGroves]

the HP turbo z cards have been designed to only work in specific HP systems while this can be bypassed via a hardware mod to the card you don't have to use the HP turbo z card in any HP workstation, any quality generic card and SSD will also work

the Samsung 970 Evo is no faster than the SM951 AHCI/NVME models, in fact the SM951 AHCI/NVME is actually faster due to it's MLC nand vs the 970 Evo's TLC nand however the 970 is available to buy new and does come in 1TB capacity whereas the sm951 is only available used and up to 512GB

the SM960Pro uses MLC nand, but again is no faster than the SM951 unless using the 1TB model which is faster (512TB is same speed as sm951)

[Yacine1]

Sorry, I don't speak English well. - DGroves- and - SDH- Thank you for the great tips on this forum