sp98397

[SDH]

Background: I got lucky and was able to buy two unopened "virgin" version 2 Z620 motherboards off eBay for a very good price. But then I had to learn how to "Tattoo" / to "Brand" those for Windows OS. They come pleuripotent, and then you enter the right codes in the right way, and they become Windows licensed. I don't know exactly when the RSTe licensing gets burned in... it might have been included with what I flashed but it surely was not an obvious step during the process.

The particular storage drivers that are installed can make a big difference. I have one Z620 v2 that can run a ZTD or 2.5" form factor SSD fine with the same cloned image, and another that can only run the 2.5" SSD with the two clones differing only in the storage controller driver present. One produces a blue screen crash if trying to boot from a ZTD. An Acronis clone of the first build (from a Z620 that can run both) onto the second Z620 (which can only run a 2.5" SSD) results in the second Z620 now being able to run both a ZTD or a 2.5" SSD from the transplanted image. The two Z620s are otherwise identical.

I'm working on the one that cannot run a ZTD, to upgrade it first with the storage controller drivers that Paul_T found as the latest official ones for W10 that HP has provided under the W10Pro64 listings for drivers for all 3 of the main ZX20 workstations. Then I'll next try those DGroves provided (which are the last Intel-provided ones that include storage controller driver support for the C602 chipset used in each of the three main ZX20 workstations).

For now I'm going with Paul's HP-provided ones first because I know of this source of ZTD-related blue screens being centered on the storage controller drivers and I want to boot from a ZTD in this build... I want to go stepwise. So, for you, I'd follow Paul's advice and you'll first get an official slightly older HP RSTe 64-bit driver install. The HP one is clearly described by HP as for W10 in their ReadMe. If you'll not be running a ZTD then you can consider moving to the DGroves version a bit later. W10 drivers sure seem to work well with W11 in these ZX20 workstations, by the way.

If you load a newer one now (DGroves') it can be hard to go back to a bit earlier one later (Paul's).

An aside... I have used the method Paul brought to us about doing W11 upgrades on "unsupported" HP workstations. I've been very happy with W11 on our Z620 v2 and Z420 v2 workstations. DGroves also is pulling this off with his expertise on the ZX20 and ZX40 workstations.

[DGroves]

I've never heard of a licensing key related to RSTe driver installs, (but i hardly know everything) what i do know is that later intel chips had Raid features turned off unless you bought a key to enable it "intel VROC" which was the successor to RST

Linux includes it's own Raid/caching driver that performs similar to the intel RST driver

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Rapid_Storage_Technology

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000024550/memory-and-storage.html

 the enterprise RST drivers "DO" check for the presence of a supported chipset device ID, and if not found will skip some or all of the install features. 

you can look at the RSTe driver inf file to see the checks the installer makes

in the case of the z820 you have the intel c6xx series chipset, and to be specific it's the c602

this chip has the normal SATA ports that can be driven with the consumer RST (non "e") but the consumer RST has no support for the c602's "SCU" ports which while sata ports, are accessed differently this is a common issue i see on the z620/820 and z640/840 systems

for proper operation, and driver install, the consumer RST (if installed) must be uninstalled and then one of the RSTe 4.3/4.5/4.6 packages is installed. (pick one i recommend the 4.6.xxxx for win 10/11 installs)

This driver supports the onboard SATA AND THE ONBOARD "SCU" BASED SATA PORTS AND INCLUDES THE MISSING LSI CHIP INF FILE

also note that windows seven requires a LSI 2308 driver for the onboard LSI SAS/SATA ports but not windows 10 and newer if the correct RSTe driver has been installed

to "SDH" you can upgrade/downgrade RST/RSTe versions using the  normal gui based setup, or via the command line switch " -override "

however there are some limits to this as systems configured with later RST/VROC will have features in use that are not present in older revisions, and this will result in a non booting system

in general, it's quite safe to upgrade minor revisions IE- from any 4.x to any 4.x but you may have issues if downgrading from say  6.x to a 4.x upgrading from older to newer is not a issue as long as the newer version still has support for the boards chipset

[OnSugarMountain]

SDH & DGvoves:

My one and only workstation (a Z820 w/dual Xeon E5-2670 & 128GB of RAM ), which I've had in service for nearly a decade, has never once failed to deliver. Every few years I upgrade the NVIDIA card and I'm good to model and render some more. I thought W10 would be end-of-life for this workhorse, but after reading your posts on Dong Ngo's trick to bypass "Secure Boot,(and other ridiculous requirements)" maybe this old workhorse will have a future with Win 11 as well.

DGroves: I upgraded from Intel's RSIe 4.3.01198 to 4.6.0.1085 with one issue: When attempting to install the GUI utility from the 4.6.x package, the Intel install utility warned me that continuing the install would downgrade both the Intel iaSTorF.sys and the iaStorS.sys drivers. I aborted the install. 

1. If I'm not building a RAID on the onboard SCU, does the RSIe GUI offer any features for the boot drive on AHCI 0?
2. If so, would you recommend proceeding with the install despite the downgrade driver warning?

SDH: When you upgraded your Zx20s to Win11, did the Windows install mess with drivers? Specifically, did it update your Storage Controller drivers or leave them as they were in your Win10 configuration?

[SDH]

I use the Acronis software to capture an image of my install, and keep that on a USB3-attached high quality external hard drive.

It takes longer to capture the image than to restore the image. Thus it is low pain for me to screw up something and then reload to a fresh install. About 15 minutes. So, I don't hesitate with experimenting... the source 2.5" SSD is safe and I'm working with a spare. I run all of these in Legacy mode, and use MBR partitioning, and do a cleanup before I capture an image or do a significant upgrade.

I'm trying to figure out the ZTD issue I described so I was very interested to see if the Device Manager/ Storage Controllers category drivers changed during the W10 to W11 "in place" upgrade. No, they did not change. The top old 2012 Intel driver stayed and the middle other Intel 2017 one in that category stayed the same too. The bottom Microsoft driver there from 2006 stayed the same too.

In the process you get to choose whether you do an strict upgrade keeping all apps and data, a limited upgrade keeping apps but no data, or a full-in clean install. That one I have not done but I bet it gets you new drivers etc chosen by MS and not by HP. Maybe MS and HP working together... I'll do that too and show images of what I end up with in Device Manager... I'll post back in a little while.

[DGroves]

as i stated in my first post, you have a incorrect consumer RST driver installed either remove it via add remove programs if you have a RST entry if not simply install the 4.6 RSTe driver package

note that the 4.5/4.6 RSTe builds also have support for the intel Optane which the z820 will not make use of, (only the RSTe driver gets installed) and these later branches/builds of RSTEe fix some major issues that the 4.3 builds had

Intel is no longer updating the RSTe packages as they are legacy items now and only the 4.5 branch will get any security related updates as it covers the widest range of products (and to date none have been released)

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when installing the intel 4.6 driver it detected the IMPROPER consumer RST driver which is currently installed

and while a later build/revision it's not the correct RSTe driver you want so the 4.6 notice about driver builds can be ignored in this case

the RSTe GUI interface is just that a graphical interface for setting the Cache/Raid options of the RSTe "driver" therefor this interface makes no difference between the 4.x builds

the only RSTe feature you want to have enabled id the drive caching, all other settings such as drive power options are optional and not required either way if you don't like to wait a few sec for a HD to wake up leave these settings disabled

windows 11 (and possibly the MS update  for newer win 11 drivers) contains all required z820 drivers except for the RSTe and AMT (com 3),  video/printer drivers

[OnSugarMountain]

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@DGroves wrote:

when installing the intel 4.6 driver it detected the IMPROPER consumer RST driver which is currently installed

and while a later build/revision it's not the correct RSTe driver you want so the 4.6 notice about driver builds can be ignored in this case

Good advice and thanks!

...ignored the install warning while executing the IATA_CD.exe inside the RSTe 4.6.0.1085 package (after creating a restore point), rebooted, and system is stable. More than just successfully installing the Intel RSTe GUI, the installer also removed the iaStorF.sys driver from both the Intel SAS & SATA Storage controllers and created two new registry keys as well.

Edit: Upon several reboots later, I noticed that the iaStorF.sys driver v.4.6.0.1048 had been restored to both the Intel C600 SAS RAID controller, as well as the C600 SATA RAID controller.