XW8600 Drive Support

[SDH]

Good luck, and keep us posted.

The problem here is the complexity of getting hard drives over 2.1 TB to run normally with the specific hardware (chipset)/software (Intel drivers for the ESB2 chipset) for the particular SATA controller that is built into the xw6400, 8400, 6600, 8600 workstations.  There is that long post here where I did pull that off, but concluded it was not really worth it for my needs.  I've personally settled in on the 2 TB max hard drives for these workstations.  Here's that how-to-do-it link:

/t5/Workstations-z-series-xw-series/Internal-3TB-drive-in-older-xw-workstation-Success-xw6600/m-p/58...

Having said that, there may be breakthroughs yet to come, and it would be very worthwhile to hear how you do one way or another.  If you can borrow that 4TB drive from a friend to experiment to prove it will work for you that would be ideal.

There is another post in the forum here about how I needed to use the free bootable DBAN CD (Dukes Boot and Nuke) for low level reformatting to initially get a 1TB Western Digital Red SATA generation 3 drive to show up on the desktop in Windows 7.  That trick is worth knowing about, and that drive has been working great since.  Now I wish I had bought the 2TB version......

[RNR1995]

The WD4001FAEX installed without issue and is fully available
I also installed a Seagate STCA4000100 USB External drive to back that one up
No issues so far, about 500 GB copied back from the 2 TB drive as of now
If there are any developments I will post back
Thank you
RNR

[RNR1995]

WOW
Just as been posted elsewhere....
After 2.1 GB of data copied to drive everything was corrupted
What a waste of time
I guess it is back to the 2 TB drive or add another controller

[TheBense]

Scott,

What PCIe 2.0 card SATAIII 6.0Gbps card are you using? 

[SDH]

Generally I'm sticking with SATA generation II SSD or spindle drives at or less than 2TB size for my needs, but for cards I note that HP has liked SIIG cards in the past for adding more SATA II ports, and eSATA ports.  HP also has a PCIe SATA generation III card from StarTech on their site for sale, and that adds two internal and two external SATA III ports:

http://h30094.www3.hp.com/product/sku/10447456/mfg_partno/PEXESAT322I

So, I can't give you any PCIe SATA generation III card suggestions from personal experience.  I can tell you that the Western Digital Red 2TB SATA generation III drives fully low level reformatted by DBAN and then NTFS long type reformatted have within Windows have held up very nicely on these SATA generation II workstations.

I do have experience with another HP PCIe card you may be interested in.  I now have an xw6600 running the latest version of the HP USB 3.0 PCIe card, the "2x2" card, with a total of 4 outputs, running on a Texas Instrument controller chip.  It is in the bottom PCIe x16 generation 2 slot (the lower of the two video card PCIe x16 slots..... both video slots are generation 2 in the xw6600 and the xw8600's, for the faster interface speeds than a PCIe generation 1 slot would give you).  It is the TI chip version, not the earlier NEC/Renasus chip version, and it has two external and two internal USB 3.0 ports. HP is using the same TI chip soldered on the motherboards of the latest Z series workstations.  Hence, easy to find the latest drivers.  That has been working great, and I'll post on all that sometime.

Scott

[TheBense]

Scott,

Any particular reason that you opted for that 1x PCIe card? 

The concerns that I have of that card is that there's at best, 5.0Gbps theoretical bandwidth with a PCIe 2.0 x1 slot.

I just recently purchased a Dell PERC H310 off of ebay. I'm hoping that I'll be able to crossflash this as a LSI card. It is a PCIe 2.0 x8 card, with 8 ports of SAS on it.

[SDH]

Remember that the USB 3.0 spec has that PCIe generation 2 speed of 5 Gb/sec, tops.  So, using the HP PCIe x1 USB 3.0 card in one of the two PCIe generation 2 slots in the xw6600 or xw8600 gets me maximum current USB 3.0 speeds.  Those slots are the upper and the lower PCIe x16 "video" slots, and the double speed of those slots is usable even through PCIe x1 cards.  It can get confusing......

If I used the same HP USB 3.0 card in the lower PCIe x16 slot in an xw6400 or xw8400 (those are PCIe generation 1 slots) then I'd max out at 1/2 of the USB 3.0 limit..... I'd get a theoritical maximum 2.5 Gb/sec bandwidth instead of 5.0 that is possible with the generation 2 PCIe slots.

http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA4-2724ENW

The point is that if you want to put a PCIe USB 3.0 or SATA generation III interface card into the fastest possible available PCIe slot in an xw6600 or an xw8600 you should choose the lower of the two video card slots.  The upper one is for your video card.  The other PCI slots in the those workstations (and all in the xw6400/xw8400 workstations) are PCIe generation one slots (2.5 Gb/sec).

[RNR1995]

FWIW

Also had to remove the Seagate 4 TB drive from this machine as BE 2010 R3 would fail with V-79-10000-11226 - VSS Snapshot error

Oddly enough installing the Seagate on the machine running the backup did not cause an error

[RNR1995]

Anyone know if the LSI adapter has the 2.1 GB limitation?
According to this document "SATA device configuration guidelines"
you can use the LSI SAS controller for SATA drives

[RNR1995]

OH well just found this

1068E does not support > 2 TB.

Thsi is still a problem in the Z800???