Z620 upgrade to SSD drive

[TsDin]

Good afternoon, dear community, 

I am going to add an SSD drive to upgrade my system, and would like to know what is the best setup for Z620 workstation. Currently I have 3 HDDs installed, SATA 0 6Gb/s  SYSTEM , SATA 1 6Gb/s STORAGE, SATA 2 3Gb/s  STORAGE. I plan to add a SATA  SSD instead of a card reader on a 5.25 inch bay. The question is how to plug for the best performance. 

Can someone recommend a solution?

And another small thing is if you know where to buy a cover for a bay, where the card reader was installed?

That's how it looks 

Thanks in advance for your help! 

[Brian1965 · Accepted solution]

HI TsDin,

Below is an image of the standard HP drive bay blank which you'll find on ebay;

As you can see from the image, this is not a simple blanking plate - more like an empty tray. I would suggest you buy something along the lines of one of these;

You can also get 2.5" internal caddies that can take 4off, 2.5" drives if that is of more interest (or a 2.5"/3.5" combo).

With regards to connecting the SSD, as you may have guessed, the Z620 only has 2off, SATA3 ports on the motherboard and 8off, SATA2 ports. You have multiple choices with regards to connecting the drive depending on if you plan on using the drive for fast access storage or as the system/OS drive;

1. For fast storage, option 1 - Buy a PCIe SATA3 card and connect the SSD to the SATA3 card, effectiviely adding more SATA3 ports to your Z620. e.g. Syba make a PCI x8 card with 2off SATA3 ports and 2off USB3 ports.

2. For fast storage, option 2 - Swap the SSD with SATA 1 drive position (6Gb/S) and move the current HDD to a SATA2 port (3Gb/s).

3. System/OS drive - Clone your current OS drive to the SSD using Minitool Partition Wizard and then physically swap the drives around, putting your old OS drive on one of the free SATA2 ports on the motherboard.

[TsDin]

Hey Brian1965, 
Thanks a million for your help. 

For now I just put an SSD into an SD card tray with a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter. But I will definitely buy something like a dual 2.5 bay you suggested. 

As for a connectivity, I've made it this way: 

SATA 0 6gbs for the new SSD 

SATA 1 6gbs for most used storage 

SATA 2 and 3 3gbs for other storages

It works fine for now. Maybe later I will make a RAID and change it a bit.  But that will be another story. 

The only issue left is with my DWD-RW drive. Not crucial. since I don't use it, but still.... 
I've conencted it to one of spare SATAs , but system can not find it. 
Any ideas? 

Thanks again, wish you well. 

[Brian1965]

The Z620 motherboard has 10 SATA ports onboard, e.g.  30 (AHCI 4x 3Gb/s), 31 (AHCI 2x 6Gb/s) and 33 (SCU 4x 3Gb/s)

All these SATA ports are managed by 2 onboard controllers (controller 1 = (30)+(31), controller 2 = (33)), however according to HP Performance Advisor, each controller can only handle 4 physical drives. In my Z620 set-up I have 2x SSD's, 3x HDD and an AHCI M.2. OS drive (Samsung SM951) in PCI slot 4, and of course a DVD drive also = 6x SATA devices + M.2. card. 

The drives in my system are connected as follows;

1.   M.2. card = PCI slot 4

2.   480GB SSD1 = SATA0 (31)

3.   2TB HDD = SATA1 (31)

4.   DVD drive = SATA2 (30)

5.   4TB HDD = SATA3 (30)

6.   480GB SSD2 = Port 3 (33)

7.   2TB HDD2 = Port 2 (33)

[TsDin]

Thanks, Brian, 

I first tried to plug a DVD into one of "33 (SCU 4x 3Gb/s)" SATAs. It did not work. 
Now I plugged it into SATA 4 of "30 (AHCI 4x 3Gb/s)".
And now all the devices are running fine 😊