Z600 not posting PCIe Card that previously worked

[Peter_Geary]

I'm having a frustrating time at the moment with attempting to get my HP Z600 Workstation to pick up my ASmedia ASM1061 based SATA 3 Add-in PCIe Card, the card previously worked in the Z600, no problems, but since I forced my PC to shutdown by holding the power button the PCIe Card no longer appears/posts, the card works in another system straight away with no configuration so it's not broken/dead, also I have test the SATA 3 Card in other PCIe slots on my Z600 and It still doesn't post, I've tried other devices in the various PCIe Slots to ensure they work and they do without any complications, I have reset the BIOS, Reset the CMOS, nothing I do seems to get the system to pick up the SATA 3 Card despite it previously working without any issues, I've tried tweaking various BIOS settings but I don't have a full understanding of what exact settings I need, but I know that it was working before I forced shutdown and now it doesn't work/doesn't appear, what can I do to fix this? Any help would be appreciated as it's baffled me what's happened with my Z600

[DGroves]

the asm 1061 chip has builtin drivers under windows 10 so if you run that os it's on less thing to worry about

you might want to try resetting the bios back to factory defaults, next inspect very closely how the card is  mating with the pci-e socket, i have seen some cheap cards where the metal bracket causes the card to not seat properly

have you tested the z600 pci-e slot(s) with a diffrent card? does it show up? if not then the issue may be the motherboard

[Peter_Geary]

I'm running Windows 10, I have already reset the BIOS back to factory settings twice and Reset the CMOS itself twice, the PCIe Slots on the Z600 Motherboard work without any issues with other PCIe devices (USB 3 Card and a Sound Card) so it's not the slots themselves, also the ASM1061 based card works fine in other systems so it's not the card itself either, I'll try checking if it's not seating properly but as it was working fine and only stopped working when I forced the PC to shutdown I doubt it's a physical connection, The card simply doesn't Post to the BIOS even though it used to without issues, I'm pretty sure it's a Software (BIOS or something else) related issue with the HP Z600 Motherboard, thanks for your advice though it's appreciated 🙂

[Peter_Geary]

I have just tried reseating the Add-in card, unfortunately no change, I'm not sure if there's a BIOS setting I need to change, there's so many settings for things I've never used before I wonder if there's a setting that needs adjusting for it to work.......

[DGroves]

when the card is in the z600 is anything connected to it? if so disconnect and try just the card boot and see if device manager shows the device/card if you are getting to the post/bios prompt with the card installed does it show up under the set boot drvice section of the bios? and if  this card controls the boot drive is it first in the list after USB/CDrom  devices

It is possible the card itself is bad the z series workstations follow the pci-e bus spec to the letter whereas some other board makers do not

i recomend you either replace the card with one that uses the same chipset (not the best solution)

or,.....get a pci-e card that is x2 instead of x1, the x2 card will be able to run at a true 6GBps speed sustained instead of up to 5GBps thes cards sell for about 30/40 dollars

SYBA SI-PEX40062 PCI-Express 2.0 x2 Low Profile Ready SATA III (6.0Gb/s) Controller Card

or it's cheaper clone:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/IO-Crest-SI-PEX40062-4-Port-SATA-III-PCI-Express-2-0-x2-Controller-Card-New...

[Peter_Geary]

Thanks for the suggestion, I am currently looking into using a different PCIe SATA card as I type this following my own thoughts on the issue, the card does work in other systems and it did use to work in the Z600 but no longer does, in terms of SATA port expansion I recently discovered something known as Port Multiplication, but I cannot work out if the Z600 supports this feature or not, I also have discovered various PCI (Not PCIe) based SATA 2 Cards that are 4 Port, the drives I'm connecting to are only HDDs and even in the future will only ever be HDDs for storage, 2.5inch form factor, I need at least 4 extra SATA ports, would it be worth getting a Raid Card like a Dell or LSI Raid Card but only for use as storage drive capacity expansion (I'm not interested in using or setting up RAID), if possible I'd like to run all 6 drives in my front bay adapter off of a single PCIe based card (Raid or just SATA 3 expansion, whatever is cheaper and works) thanks for any additional input that you can provide me with 🙂

[DGroves]

i think that "SDH" who also posts here and has a z600 has said the onboard intel ports do support eSATA however i don't recall if  Port Multiplication is also supported on this model (with intel i't's hit and miss for this feature

if you can swing the slight price increase a LSI 9212 based card with "IT firmware would be a better choice

also note that if you find a 9212 but the card has "IR" firmware (raid) installed you can easely reflash with "IT" firmware

a 9212 card with "IT" firmware is known as a HBA card (host bus adapter) and simply add more sata ports nothing  more

as such a drive connected on this ard can be disconnected and reconnected on a motherboard SATA port and continue to work

9212 cards are about 40-50 dollars on ebay

[Peter_Geary]

Thanks for the HBA card suggestion, seeing as Port Multiplication is a grey area and I have other options I'll leave that for now, in terms of Add in cards, I've found an LSI00137 Raid Card, it's got all the features I need and supports up to 2TB drives which is all I need, is there any software sided things I need to consider when wanting to use any particular model of Raid/HBA card with my system (Windows 10 Pro as the OS)

[DGroves]

while the card you posted to will work it's very limited i STRONGLY RECOMEND you select another card which has better OS support, supports larger drives, and supports the SATA 6GBps bus speed  the card you are thinking about using is at the bottom of the barrel nowadays (fyi this LSI chipset was released over 16 years ago)

next, i suspect the card you are buying is a raid card, as such if the card fails you better hope you can find a replacement or your array is toast unless a newer  LSI card can read the raid information stored on the drives

lthe lsi 9212 cards can be had for under 30.00 and as i noted can be flashed to IR or IT firmware

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-LSI-SAS9212-4i-4-Port-6G-PCIe-HBA-RAID-Controller-Card-694504-001-629913...

a dell Perc H310 card is also a good choice and is quite cheap and feature rich

[Peter_Geary]

Would the Dell card offer the features you previously mentioned, I ask this because the Dell H310 card is one other option I'm looking at, the LSI 9212 based cards are also well priced but I really want at least 4 ports, preferably 6 or 8 ports, as I would then be able to connect all my drives (minus the two 3.5inch drives) to the HBA card