installing a SSD into Z600 Workstation.

[Sepiriz]

Hi monkey

Just wondered if you have any update on how the Samsung evo installation has gone, it is a favourite drive of mine that in future I'd love to integrate into my HP.

Many thanks

S

[monkey_griff]

Hi Sepiriz,

Will let you know first thing my Formfactor arrives.. the amazon seller said it was in the uk, turns out it ships from China! abit of a con if you ask me, but either way I cant try until I recieve the blindmate formfactor..

I have the evo sitting next to me now so have full intention on reporting back once its installed.

Will keep you posted,

Griff

[monkey_griff · Accepted solution]

Installed a Samsung Evo 500gb SATA III into my z600..and it works perfectly.

Installed it last week and have been installing programs and having general use from it with no problems. I wanted to test it properly before posting a response. It could be possible that i experience issues with it later, but I would of thought that if it had any issues I would know about it by now.

My SSD reads at 282 MB/s and writes at 270 MB/s - Random Read 51612 (IOPS) Random Write (IOPS) 47395.

Being a SATA II gen workstation its not reaching the SSD's full potential at 540/520 Mb/s read write but from what I've read you wouldn't even notice the difference its so fast.. and I agree  CC suite, mozilla, (haven't installed 3dsmax yet) all boot in seconds compared to minutes on old HDD.

Just to note I didn't use a HP recovery disk to reinstall OS. I used an official windows 7 .iso and booted from USB (even though it some has some useful things, i didn't want HP bloatware) Drivers installed perfectly without a hitch. Windows serial on bottom of tower

1. Installing hardware? the z600 3.5 inch caddy wouldn't house an SSD, do HP sell brackets which will fit the z600 ?

" Via Scott's comments, look for the 'needs-tool' version in the post's above, mine cost £8.50 and takes all of 5 seconds to fit the ssd to the z600. I wouldn't sugguest buying the tool-less version.. unless you have no hands and lots of money."

2. Compatibility with the workstation? are there types of SSD which are best suited for z600 workstations?

"Yes they're HP approved SSDs detailed in the post's above, but I've had no issue with consumer grade SSD, but you roll the dice with which brand. The Samsung EVO 500gb, no problems. You can use SATA III ssd's but you can get issues as warned by HP as their firmware doesn't support some types (so basically if it doesn't work they wont help you) ".

3. Installing and set up? is it as straight forward as plugging in the SSD via SATA cable and installing the OS? Any Bios tweaks?

"Make sure your BIOS is set to RAID+AHCI (Mine was already setup like this). I used the samsung magician tool after install and it will say that your PC is not set to AHCI, but i just ignore it. As long as BIO's and firmware are up to date you will be fine. Use a blindmate formfactor to install the ssd (see above posts). Make sure you get the latest firmware on a usb before you install SSD, it should be the first thing to check after installing the SSD. You don't need to change SATA cables from II to III as the cables are backwards compatible.. either way having a SATA III in a z600 will just limit you to SATA II speeds (which compared to a normal HDD are ridiculously quick). Just plug-in and install OS. It may be worth reading up on SSD optimistation, the samsung magician advises some things to do but not all neccessary, its either lifespan over performance.. defintely worth reading up on, if this is your first SSD as it was for me."

Hands down best upgrade i've done to my workstation, and very simple to do. I'm glad I waited for better support and for the cost to go down on SSD's before using them.

Want to say a big thanks to Scott Harrison for his help on this subject. I pestered him lots but have really appreciated his guidance! cheers Scott and anyone else who posted help.

Enjoy your SSD, I will.

Griff

[SDH]

Griff,

Congrats, and thanks much for posting back to the forum with lots of great information.  You were not a pester at all!

Here's a tiny correction.... the form factor converter from HP you bought is the inexpensive "needs-tool" rather than the expensive "tool-free" one from HP.  Your post says "toolless" in the red part there which you may wish to edit.  They're both made for HP by Foxconn in China, of the same metal and use the same exact "Blindmate" mating connector on their rear end.  The tool-free one costs way way more than the one that needs a screwdriver, and your readers will want to search for 654540-001 on eBay to see what the less expensive one looks like.  If you take some of the descriptions from those and search under those in eBay rather than the number you can often find an even cheaper cost.  I bought directly from China for blocks of 10 several times without problem at about $8.00 USD each.

At least with my HP recovery DVD set I can avoid almost all the stuff HP adds in..... you can opt out of HP programs install during the process.  HP puts much more bloatware into the recovery sets for consumer grade PCs rather than the workstation sets.  If your recovery set included W7Pro you don't have to buy another license.  The recovery build also gives you a HP OEM COA serial number that results in a build that can be imaged and cloned to other same-type workstations (I use Clonezilla for that).  Even if you don't need to do that I'd recommend you do this as an initial backup method now to save your  core build onto another SATA drive to clone back onto another SSD or hard drive of same or larger size to recreate your original build.  The image save and clone build processes each take about 20 minutes.

 I update my build with the latest drivers and MS updates before such image captures.  Very handy because you can save yourself huge amounts of time later this way.  A tip..... if you try Clonezillla burn it onto a CD rather than a USB drive to boot from during use.  I had a bootable USB with it on it get changed somehow and got very confused for a bit.... saved myself by burning Clonezilla onto a CD, and a CD won't change on you.

Speaking of drivers....... the W7 build from a Microsoft DVD or even from the downloaded bootable USB installer from Microsoft will have older drivers on it for some critical infrastucture on your motherboard.  They work, but not optimally.  A number of the HP SoftPaq driver updaters are "universal" in that they will work fine on earlier workstations.  You're already using drivers that are not official HP ones, so why not the latest/greatest?  Check if your Z600 uses a Realtek AOM (Audio On Motherboard) chip, and Broadcom LOM (LAN On Motherboard) chip.  If so, go to the Z620 drivers HP download site and get the quite recently released drivers for those, for W7Pro64.  Next, go into your control panel Programs and Features and uninstall anything with Broadcom and Realtek in its name.  Do restarts after each uninstall.  Then run the latest HP SoftPaqs for those two.

I do this on all of my xw6400 and xw6600 builds, and also my xw4600 builds.  There are even ways to do this to update to the latest storage controller drivers for your chipset.  Video drivers..... with nVidia Quadro driver sets I uninstall all nVidia stuff first, don't restart yet but do delete any remaining folders from the root C drive in Programs folder and Programs (x86) folder and the hidden Program Data folder and then I restart.  I then run the newest Quadro installer for my card in custom mode, check the Clean Install box, and only install the single "Driver" and uncheck all of the other stuff.  That single "Driver" has all the necessary good stuff in it, and I don't need/want nView or 3-d stuff.

Finally, if you want to add in a HP USB3 card I can help with that.

[monkey_griff]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the heads up on 'needs-tool error'. I have edited to the correct one.

Yeah as you've probably read , I got stooped with the shipping location on amazon, the seller has a address in manchester uk but once i ordered it, it changed to China.. but to be fair it didn't take as long as i expected.

'HP puts much more bloatware into the recovery sets for consumer grade PCs rather than the workstation sets'
Ahh i wasn't aware of this, either way I didn't get a recovery disk with my Build (I assume it was on a partition though) I know alot of people think you have to use HP recovery disks when in fact you don't. Even if i had a recovery disk they will be out of date still. Least this way I can choose exactly what's going on my workstation.

"You're already using drivers that are not official HP ones, so why not the latest/greatest?"
I downloaded some drivers from the HP website for z600,  Will these be ok then?  Which would you suggest/recommend upgrading? Bios /Graphics/Broadcom NetXtreme Gigababit I've up-dated, i wasn't sure about the rest. I installed the realtek audio driver but turns out it was older than the windows driver I currently had plus added some pointless startup interface which I didn't like so rolled it back.

'Quadro installer for my card in custom mode'
I've pretty much done this with all my installs, didn't install nvidia 3d vision or audio either as they're not needed for my setup. I had msconfig open and kept an eye on every install. Itunes had by far the most bloatware, It had 4 pointless applications it installs and creates services/startups for all. Found a great way of extracting the .msi from the .exe via winrar and installing via cmd prompt with '/passive' command . Installs without the bloat and works perfectly.

Thanks for the clonezilla info, I don't know why it is but I've never done a clone/image of OS.  I know it's a pain re-installing things, but I think I just feel better knowing that everything is wiped and can install on a fresh slate.. with the latest and greatest but that's just me..

I think I'm done with upgrades at the moment but thanks for the offer, I got a Accelero Turbo III for my quadro 4000 as I've seen a few people mod theirs. The size of the case and distance from access panel is my only concern its going to be very close! Will look into CPU heatsinks later on. I've confirmed that my temps had nothing to do with installs/services/previous OS its just how they are (but this topic is a different post all-together).

Thanks Scott

[SDH]

Griff,

Sounds like you have this pretty much all in order.... congrats.

Regarding the driver updates from HP.... currently I take what the installer gives me, and update with those critical ones I mentioned.  At a point HP stops the process of "validating" new updates on a workstation and leaves the drivers last validated for that workstation (Z600) there available via their drivers download site.

That does not mean newer drivers from some generations ahead (Z620) are not being validated and updated still.  Thus, I go to the Z620 drivers page for W7Pro64 and subselect only those specific universal installers that HP has there that relate to my older workstation's chips/chipsets, drivers which are more recent than what I am running.  Those installers still work great even on my xw6400/xw6600 builds, and will work great on your Z600.  An example is the Broadcom driver download for the Z620.  The LOM (Local area network On Motherboard) chip on the Z620 is Intel, but HP officially offered a Broadcom NIC, and the very recent updated HP installer from the Z620 will work on both Broadcom LOM and NIC chips, and on my xw6400 etc workstations.  It works perfectly, with all the latest drivers and application control components and in the HP ReadMe they say the improvements are too numerous to list.  Same concept with the Realtek drivers/application from the Z620 working with the xw6400 forward.

Another example is my use of the USB3 TI "2x2" PCIe card that HP had for the Z600 generation.  That TI chip was integrated into the motherboard of the Z620, but the USB3 TI driver installer from the Z620 works perfectly for those HP PCIe TI 2x2 cards in the xw6400/xw6600/Z600 workstations.

For this update approach I always go into the Control Panel Programs and Features subsection and uninstall any part with Realtek or Broadcom in its name.  Same for TI.  I want that installer to start with as clean a situation as possible. 

Regarding Clonezilla...... to have a clean image captured of what you have right now in your build is of value only if you don't really love spending hours upon hours on getting a clean build base..... I don't mind that so much, but I have partners who screw up my build on their box semi-often, and I have one box here with me that I keep updated just for the purpose of capturing a clean updated clone image every 4 months or so, and can just go over and implant that onto their SSD right over what they messed up.  This is not your situation, however.

You don't need to install the application parts of the Broadcom/Realtek installers if you don't want, but the latest 64-bit driver updates are what I wanted, and got this way.  I self-validate my work rather than rely on HP for that in these older workstations, and that is working just fine.

Scott

[monkey_griff]

Scott,

Cheers! Its pretty much there now. Thanks for the info on the z620 drivers, I wouldn't of assumed that you could install those on a z600. It makes sense that HP would update the drivers on their newer models than older.

The one driver im unsure of and haven't installed yet, is the 'chipset' category in the drivers list. I assume this is relative to my CPU's (I've never updated this driver before). Is it worth me updating the chipset?.. I have xeon x5650's. The z620 page states two different Chipset drivers 1: Intel management engine software update and utilites. 2: Intel Patsburg chipset drivers for MS windows. any idea which i should install?

Most of the driver I have installed seem to have utilities and extra's which I never use. All i want is the drivers and not the rest and most of the softpaq's dont give alot of options to customise install. The realtek driver for z600 comes with pointless startup app + drivers. I unistalled it from control panel and seem to take the drivers with it, i couldnt find away to separate the sofware/driver.

If its not already evident I am a drivers noob, I only update if I get issues with OS but I knew my new build would require updates. Graphics card drivers I always updated but the rest I never looked into. I will look into unistalling current and updating my drivers with the z620 drivers when i'm home.

 It is a big pain reinstalling everything im not going to lie, but I dont tend to do it very often. I have a word document outlining everything i needed to do to get my new build setup to match the previous. If you have to build lots of HP workstations on a day to day basis (which I can assume is related to your job, as i wouldn't think you would do this for fun   I'm sure this will help a great deal. Cheers for the tip!

Griff

[SDH]

I don't actually use the Broadcom or Realtek control panels that these HP SPs put in there, but want the latest drivers so I just leave those applications there.

I think you're done.... you don't want that other stuff you mention.  That chipset thing is from Intel, and it probes all your chips and might find some obscure upadate but it probably is old by now, and your install likely is ahead of that.  You can mess with searching for a more recent chipset updater from Intel if you really want, and they even have an automated prober/updater you can run for that purpose.

[monkey_griff]

I'm probably as glad as you are to put a pin in this thread I'm done with drivers and settings... im going to enjoy my new and improved z600

Have really appreciated your time and the fact you gave indepth explainations (It's quite rare to find on forums these days). I'm sure other people will get lots of help from all the info you've provided! I certainly have.

You made this process alot easier! cheers,

Griff 

[cbain]

The cheap Ebay and Amazon sellers don't seem to list the HP brand or number any more. I can confirm that the 'General 2.5" SSD to 3.5" SATA Hard Disk Drive HDD Adapter CADDY TRAY CAGE Hot Swap Plug' from Amazon is in fact the HP 675769-001. The '2.5'' SSD to 3.5'' SATA HDD Hard Disk Drive Adapter Caddy Tray Cage & Screws' on Ebay looks from the photos to also be the HP one. Both are cheap (~$10) but there are some sellers selling for crazy prices.

To get SATA 3 buy a ASM1061 PCI express card (~$10 from ebay including global shipping, search 'PCI-E Express SATA3 SATA3.0 6Gb/s eSATA SATA III Card w/SATA Data Cable ASM1061'). With this card the Z600 will be able to boot from the connected drives. (btw If you have any boot issues, try the cards in a different slot - the Z600 seems to be a bit problematic with particular slot combinations of video card and SATA and USB cards)