NVMe PCIe SSD boot support in Z820

[MrBike]

hi Dan,

I get that NVMe is only officially supported on zx40's but UEFI boot on z620 is and that is my problem. I don't get it to show any UEFI bootable source despite the settings outlined in my previous post.

regards,

Urs

[soccer_dan]

good question. here is my answer, at a high level:

In non-nvme ssd,  the controller still acts as a ahci/sata device and accepts standard disk driver, and bios, commands. the nvme controller in an ssd dispenses with ahci interface (main reason of the performance increase) and therefore requires some different commands from the bios to see if it is a bootable media and pass control to it. The bios in the z6400 knows how to deal with nvme while the z620 bios does not. that is why windows will see it as a drive; it knows about it

[MrBike]

hi Dan,

you're missing my point. I'm not talking about the NVMe SSD but about the z620's startup screen not showing any UEFI bootable device - despite a W7 x64 and a W10 x64 DVD that are officially UEFI bootable. same applies for an W10 x64 installsource on a USB stick in either of the front USB ports.

the mass storage option is set to EFI. any hints?

cheers,

Urs

[soccer_dan]

Sorry, i was misinterpreting your question. as far as booting off uefi, windows 10 media should allow you to so i am not sure what is happening there. as far as the usb key media, how was it formatted? it hs to be fat32 (not nfts) format and has to be properly diskpart condinioned or a proper tool to recreate the boot sector and requirements to make the flash media bootable. for example, in DISKPART, these commands would make it bootablte

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK [DiskNumber of USB KEY]
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
ACTIVE
FORMAT FS=FAT32 QUICK
ASSIGN

then, just open the medio ISO file and copy the contents to the flash drive - drag-drop work fine

i will try to find additional information as well

[MrBike]

yes the USB stick was formatted FAT32 and yes it was made bootable (using rufus)

is there any other setting in computer setup that needs to be changed other than mass storage option: EFI?

[soccer_dan]

Not off the top off my head. However, a troubleshooting step would be to get the BIOS setup information data to look at. The right tool for this is the BIOSConfigUtility, which be obtained via link from www.hp.com/go/clientmanagement, under the HP Hardware Management Tools. Please, run the tool after downloading and unpacking the Softpaq. The tool can get all the BIOS settings into a file, or set new settings into the BIOS based on modifications of the same file. Read the user manual included for the correct runtime and spelling string to obtain the configuration data

Provide us with this file and we can check for settings that might help

[MrBike]

thanks for the hint with the BIOS config utility. however in the meantime I've managed to get it to UEFI boot off the USB stick. can't remember which of the front ports I plugged it in but apparently switching to the other did the trick.

still a bit of a conundrum why it wouldn't UEFI boot off the DVD ROM as I don't have any other UEFI capable PC handy to test the DVD ROM.

meanwhile the z620 boots Win 10 pro off the intel 750 nvme card even without any additional drivers 🙂

thanks much for your input anyway!

Urs

[AkerZ820]

Hi, highjacking the thread with basically the same problem if that is ok?

I have a z820, dual Xeons and 128gb RAM, running windows 7 enterprise that we decided to upgrade with an Intel PC3700 400gb PCI-E NVMe SSD drive. BIOS version 3.88

I cannot for the life of me get it to boot from the SSD, i have tried everything that i could from the tips in this thread but no success. What differs in our setup to most others here is that i cannot get a DVD image of windows, i have to do a network install, our company does not have DVD´s from microsoft.

I have set Mass storage option to EFI, and the DVD, and changed storage option to AHCI, but no recognition when restarting.

I have tried to clone the existing C: drive onto the SSD in windows, then remove the existing SAS drives and boot from the SSD, but no success. I have booted from a USB using Macrium reflect to get into the PE environment, and while i can see the drive there, BIOS still cannot see the drive upon restart.

From what i have read it seems that the z820 does not have native support for NVMe drives, and if that is true i dont see how having the drivers available on a USB stick working when booting from the DVD either, wouldnt BIOS no see the drive after restart and not be able to access the drive anyway?

Furthermore it seems that windows 7 cannot boot in UEFI mode anyway?

How did SSDRocks get his system to work, it seems that he had basically the same setup, running windows 7?

Thanks in advance, i am at my wits end here so any advice is greatly appreciated...

[soccer_dan]

The HP Z820 workstation will not boot from an nvme pci-e drive (for example hp turbo drive 2.0), only from a ahci, pci-e drive (for example hp turbo drive 1.0). The BIOS will not see the nvme drive as bootable media. The newer Z840 has built-in support for both types of pci-e boot cards

[SDH]

A small piece of the puzzle might relate to the fact that not all HP optical drives in the Z620 are alike in basic capabilities.  I came across one that could not proceed through an official clean install off a genuine MS system builder's DVD, SP1 version, but when I swapped in another HP optical drive that I knew had worked for this type of install on another Z620 the install worked fine, finally.

I've also seen other HP optical drives that would not do W7Pro64 installs on the older HP xw workstations until I did a crossflash to a Dell updated firmware for that particular hardware (HP chose to not provide a firmware update for that particular drive).  Thereafter the optical drive would work fine for such installs.

And, there are the two versions of the Z620 motherboard.... original, and revision 1, with the two different boot block dates.  Might the differences in chipsets influence this?

So, there can be subtle issues at play here......