z800 PCIe SSD upgrade 2016

[daleroe]

Continuation from here: http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Z800-Upgrade-for-20...

Many Thanks to all the people who helped!

I installed the Intel 9.6.0.1014 driver as suggested however, it replaced a newer driver 11.1.0.1006. It may have worked without installing the older driver but I errored on the side of a known working solution.

The real source of my problem was that I needed to enable "Option ROM Download" for Slot 1 where the PCIe card was plugged in. Once I got that set, after restarting, I could see the drive and set it first in the boot order.  What does "Option ROM Download" do?

BTW what does "Compute" enable do? The reason I ask is that I have a nVidia Quadro 6000 which I can select to use the 6Gb ram for graphics and compute needs. Do I need to enable "Compute" on that slot to make it work?

So, once I got this PCIe SSD drive working 

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDACL6G.S/

I decided to give my original purchase, the 480GB OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD (2x240GB RAID 0) a try and it worked!!

Thanks again for all the help!

FYI During my conversation with OWC I was lead to beleive the newer version of the dual SSD RAID 0 is aslo AHCI. My understanding is that it should work also since it can uses the same SSDs. The technical staff there was very helpful.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDPHWE2R960/

[SDH]

That is a very valuable discovery..... From checking on multiple HP workstations after seeing your post it appears that all those PCI slots had Option ROM Download set to Enable as the default.  Thus, it looks like you got unlucky and someone in the past had switched that option to Disable for some reason.  However, this is a critical discovery to know about.

For those who want to see this on their workstations.... F10 into BIOS and go over to the Advanced tab on the far right.  All the slots are listed down in the bottom area of that column.

In my research on the Predator from Kingston (a M.2 AHCI-controller SSD using a PCIe adapter card to mount that on the PCIe bus) I discovered that one of its special characteristics is an Option ROM built in to the M.2 component.  That is not common for M.2 SSDs, and when I looked into that the OPROM coding is considered helpful for a device to be bootable.  That is, if there is an OPROM available for BIOS to interface with then the chances of a successful boot from the device are greatly increased.  The OPROM coding that Kingston created is an interface so that the AHCI drivers from the OS can interface unusually well with the Predatir M.2 PCIe device..... M.2 devices are native PCIe, so it may not be that complex of an OPROM.  NVMe is much less complex than AHCI, but AHCI can work with legacy BIOS, and we'll never have non-legacy BIOS for these ZX00 HP workstations and the xw generation of HP workstations I'm also experimenting with.

My guess is that if you ask the Other World Computing guys they have their own custom OPROM firmware chip in the two pieces of hardware you showed.

Regarding that Storage Controller driver I recommended, the older 9.x you are now using.  I captured an Acronis image off one of my Z600 builds running that driver, cloned the image onto my new Predator, and it booted up perfectly the first time.  I then updated the source Z600 build to the 11.x Storage Controller driver, re-imaged, re-cloned, and re-booted.  Got the blue screen instantly just as the boot was leaving BIOS and transitioning over to the OS phase of boot.  I then re-cloned back onto the same exact hardware with no changes to BIOS etc. (now again using the 9.x driver) and rebooted..... rock solid.  So, it really seems to be a driver issue at least for the Predator M.2 PCIe SSD, in my mind.  This assumes you have the slot properly set to the default so that the boot process accepts the OPROM that the device wants to give it.  I have no idea yet whether your two devices would have worked fine also with the 11.x driver you originally had.

Again, your discovery is key to this all working correctly.     Re "Compute"..... I have not found what that means either.....

[MtothaJ]

I have a feeling that the 950 Pro would also work on the Zx00 line. It also has the option rom and Samsung provides 32 bit and 64 bit drivers for i.a. Windows 7, that should be installed when installing Windows: http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/downloads/document/Samsung_SSD_950_PRO_White_paper...

I have a 950 Pro and if I ever have the opportunity to check this on a Zx00 machine I will report back.

[SDH]

Found some info on that "Compute" option..... this is out of my area of expertise:

You may have heard that there are graphics cards that can be converted to "compute devices".... and when configured that way they can't be used as a graphics card until reconfigured back to graphics card mode via this BIOS feature.  Here is a quote:   "The compute option is for an additional graphics card to tell the computer not to use it as a display device but to use it as a graphics processing unit."

You can imagine the corner you'd back yourself into if you were dinking around and enabled that option for all PCI and PCIe slots.  And because that is a BIOS setting it does not change back to defaults when you use the usual reset the CMOS/motherboard tricks.  As a result you end up flying blind and don't know how to get back to normal.  That is termed "bricking" your Z800, described  HERE.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Bricked-HP-Z800-with-compute-opt...

I'd leave that alone.......

[daleroe]

Here are the bench mark results for the OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD:

[rdiaz02]

I have a similar configuration (in fact, closer to the one reported in https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Z800-Upgrade-for-2...), but I can't get it to work. 

- PCIe card: OWC Accelsior S Storage Expansion: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDACL6G.S/;

- SSD:  Samsung EVO 850, 2 TB, 2.5-inch, SATA III (model number: MZ-75E2T0).

- I have placed the PCIe card in the very first slot, the one above the primary video PCIe x16 slot (as suggested in https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Z800-Upgrade-for-2...)

- I have updated the BIOS to 3.60. 

- "Option ROM Download" was already set to Enable (as per your post).

- SATA emulation is set to RAID + AHCI in BIOS.

But I cannot even get to the BIOS (F10) or to boot order (F9) once I place the card with the disk.  The system gets stuck showing

Which happens right after

(I have not tried to install the Intel 9.6.0.1014 driver: I am running Linux, and my first problem is that I cannot even get to the BIOS or to modifyng boot order after placing the card with the SSD).

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

Ramon

[rdiaz02]

I solved the issue (though I do not boot from the SSD). In case it helps anyone, here is what I tried and what worked. Recall I am running Linux.

- Z800 will hang forever when "Option ROM Download" is set to Enable.

- I disable "Option ROM Download", boot normally, and Linux can see the SSD (sde). I create a partition table like the one in the HDD (MBR or msdos type), including a small 512 MB fat16 partition at the beginning, with the boot flag set. I also create separate partitions for what will become /boot (sde2), / (sde3), and /home (sda4) [with optional encryption for / and/or /home, but that is beyond the point here].

- I reboot with a usb key, and I copy /boot, /, and /home from the sdd drive.

- I chroot into the SSD, etc, and do the usual
update-grub
grub-install /dev/sde ## sde is the SSD
update-initramfs -k all -u

(and modify the fstab for the /boot in the sde)

- I try to boot with the "Option ROM Download" disabled. Nope, will not work. (As this disk is not seen as boot).

- I try to boot with the "Option ROM Download" enabled. Nope, booting hangs forever (not even honoring the F9 or F10 for boot sequence or Setup).

- I disable again "Option ROM Download".

Do the
update-grub
grub-install /dev/sda
update-initramfs -k all -u

so I try to do the grub-install to /dev/sda. And, as expected, it does not work: grub gives a "No such device" for the UUID of the /boot in sde. This, I think, was expected: if I understand correctly, the code in the MBR will be able to use a /boot in that same disk, not another disk. And the SSD seems not to even be seen at this point.

- I use the /boot in the sda. So I change the entry in /etc/fstab but, most crucially, when I chroot, I mount under /boot the boot partition in the sda. And I grub install to /dev/sda. So, in detail, I chroot with a sequence like

mkdir /mnt/dst
mount /dev/sde3 /mnt/dst ## / from the SSD
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/dst/boot ## /boot from the HDD
mount -t proc none /mnt/dst/proc
mount -t sysfs none /mnt/dst/sys
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dst/dev
chroot /mnt/dst

edit fstab (to have /boot be /sda2)

and issue

update-grub
grub-install /dev/sda
update-initramfs -k all -u -t

[just in case, I repeat the last three steps twice; and the -t was needed at some point]

I umount all the previous mount points and reboot.

Now it works. So basically booting is using the vmlinuz, etc, in /boot in the HDD. But the rest of the programs and data are from / and /home in the SDD.

- This is not fully satisfactory as I'd rather have the vmlinuz be read from the SSD and, in general, use a /boot in the SSD. But for what really matters (I only shutdown and reboot the machine once every several months) the SSD is now being used. The differences (relative to the HDD) are **very** noticeable.

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

hope this answers most of the questions/guess's that people have posted

Bios Option Rom Download

this simply means allow the device's  rom code to be merged into the PC's boot sequence.

doing so will allow a device to be initilised during boot and be available to the OS or be a bootable device

Bios  enable/disable pci-e slot(s)

the enable/disable for each pci-e slot is a way to prevent the card's "bios" from being loaded (if the card has a bios)

this option is usefull if you install a card, and get a no free bios space msg, you can then look to see if you have a card that does not need it's bios loaded at boot time and tell that card not to load the bios this option also extendes to the onboard SCSI/SAS controller, dual ethernet

Booting nVME SSD's

some ssd's have legacy OPROM along with the nvme code, if your ssd maker has this OPROM it simply means that

the SSD bios will supply the missing nvme boot code that the z800 bios lacks allowing the nvme to be a boot device

most nvme ssd's do not have legacy OPROM, and as such can not be used as a boot device

Bios Compute

The compute option is for additional graphics cards to tell the computer not to use it as a display device

but still see/use the video card gpu as a processor computing device rather than a display device

[daleroe]

Thank you for the explainations!