Your Z820 or Z800 SSD boot time?

[dv411]

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@lms-eng wrote:

I was just talking about 1 single driver loading in windows. If you don't need the LSI controller, the only way to disable and reduce the boot time is to set the device as Hidden in security settings in the bios.

Got it, thanks.  That's the culprit of long boot times then.  Hope there is a solution to this at some point outside of disabling the device.

[SDH]

Alex,

Thanks for your comments above.  I want to clarify.... I'm not getting logon done in 14 seconds.  What I have is:

Cold to W7Pro64 logon prompt:  38.5 seconds total, which includes the Cold-to-"Starting Windows" time of 24 seconds.

So, it sounds like you're going faster through that first phase of boot, but I'm getting from "Starting Windows" to the W7 logon prompt in only 14.5 added seconds.  That may be what you were referring to.

Today I loaded Explorer 10 64-bit for W7, just released..... no change in times for each of these.

Scott

[dv411]

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@Scott D. Harrison wrote:

I'm getting from "Starting Windows" to the W7 logon prompt in only 14.5 added seconds.  That may be what you were referring to.

Indeed.   It looks like xw6600 does not have a SAS controller - possibly the reason its Windows start time is so much faster.

[HPmanic]

...Being my first post, my apologies for the necro-bump (a bit old thread, but quite significant, nonetheless).

Just took the plunge on a low-mileage, Z800 (eBay) which I am still building / tuning. I really loved this machine since the first day I saw it on you tube ("Rosie" dismantling it... 8-)

Before OS re-gen, I dropped in a 840pro (256GB), and my humble-and-trusty Windows Home Premium-64. Running drive with on-board SATA 3Gb controller (SAS disabled in BIOS)., and iRST in Win-7. The Samsung was a total plug-and-play, not a single hiccup, except for the AHCI, which it reports as absent (the drive is clueless, anyway).

So far, 11.75 to 12.50 secs, from "Starting Windows" (no windows-logo shown), all the way to Login-prompt. Before that, is about 28secs, approx. Windows is fully patched/updated, as well as every single device and driver. Some key apps already loaded. Runs witn 39-42 processes open, max.

Now, QUESTION before I start unplugging/replugging cables: would the SATA 840pro run faster on SAS ports? Has anyone tried this? (I know it will boot longer, but just wondering...)

THANKS!

[dv411]

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would the SATA 840pro run faster on SAS ports? Has anyone tried this? (I know it will boot longer, but just wondering...)

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(Sorry for the late response - didn't see your message until now.)

It shouldn't (run any faster):

• the SAS controller itself doesn't have much of a brain or caching or acceleration to outpace plain vanilla SATA;
• SAS protocol, even if it was faster than SATA, doesn't kick in with SATA drives - it operates in SATA mode (e.g. no full duplex), and then...
• even if it did operate in SAS mode, the workload scenarios in which SAS begins to make sense and is faster than SATA are quite specific. I.e. very little point in putting anything on SAS unless you're out of SATA ports...

Side note / soapbox: can't wait for the Z-series to support NVMe SSDs and a decent SFF backplane. C'mon HP, been begging you for ages. If MBPs and nMPs can do it (NVMe), why can't HP?

[Charalampos_Ferekidis]

Dear All,

encouraged by your discussion I have just checked the "windows start time" (not boot time) of my z800 and z820 machines when connecting the system SSD to the Intel or LSI-controller. Both machines showed identical  start times for the two controllers.  On the  z800 (using a rather old INTEL 120GB SSD)  windows 7x64 starts within 30sec (that's the time between prompting "starting windows" and showing the user login page). The z820 takes 18secs using 2x 256GB Samsung 840 Pro Series SSDs connected as RAID 1.

Since I'm not that familiar with the advantages/disadvantages of using the Intel or LSI -controller any light that's shed on the issue is highly apprciated.

Lampos

[HPmanic]

MANY thanks for your detailed response (!)

Have been working extensively with my Z800 for quite some time now (Digital Image/still Processing and Video Encoding) and all I can say is WHAT A BLAST (!) I could hardly be happier, and based on my projected needs, I would probably be so, for quite some time to come (with the twins X5660 / 12-core, you strike a pretty decent balance of power-consumption / heat dissipation and overall performance). 

My watt-meter shows 128-131 watts on stand-by (machine on, idle, booted in Windows), and about 330-350 watts when you punch it, hard. Keep in mind that graphics are ran from a Nvidia Kepler-4000, which is pretty much silent and low-wattage, too. Both the graphichs and twin CPUs share a similiar lithography (close to 30nm) which sounds pretty balanced, to me.

After all being said-and-done, and most of my key apps loaded (and Windows-7 mindfully loaded and tuned from zero), this machine consistently and reliably boots in 15.5 to 15.6 secs, from its Samsung 840 Pro hooked to a SATA port. That's good enough for me to permanently disable hibernation (not to mention the 24 GB of RAM that would also make that a bit unpractical). Just old-school, full power-up and down works like a breeze, here.

Thanks!

[BTUser]

This is an interesting thread.  I’ve had a slow boot on my HP Z820 for over a year now but I have not had the time to investigate it.  Today I spent time understanding part of the reason for my slow boot.  I thought my findings would be interesting to this discussion.  First my basic system information:

• Dual Xeon E5-2643 3.3 GHz processors
• 32 GB of memory
• Windows 8.1 Professional
• Boot Drive:  Intel 530 240GB SATA SSD

The first problem I had to deal with was the time it took from power on to the time Windows started loading the OS.  On my system, that was taking ~50.2 seconds.  I went into the BIOS setup, went to Advanced -> Device Options, and disabled the Option ROM download for the NIC (AMT), NIC, and SAS options.  Previously my SATA SSD was connected to the SAS HBA but, since I disabled the SAS Option ROM, I moved it to the motherboard SATA connector.  After making these changes, the time for Windows to start loading went from ~50.2 seconds down to ~17.5 seconds.

That was decent enough for the system.  Windows 8.1, however, was still taking more time than expected to boot. I performed boot capture analysis using xbootmgr as detailed here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/158252-trace-why-windows-8-boots-shutsdown-or-hibernates-slowly/

The timing analysis gave me:

<interval name="PreSMSS" startTime="0" endTime="15576" duration="15576">
<interval name="SMSSInit" startTime="15576" endTime="27197" duration="11621">

In analyzing the 15.576 second PreSMSS phase, I found the two drivers that took the most time were these:

<pnpObject name="PCI\VEN_1000+DEV_0086+SUBSYS_158B103C+REV_05\4+11dde01f+0+0008" type="Device" activity="Start" startTime="740" endTime="8571" duration="7831" prePendTime="7831" description="LSI Adapter, SAS2 2308 Mustang">

<pnpObject name="PCI\VEN_8086+DEV_1D02+SUBSYS_158B103C+REV_05\3+11583659+0+FA" type="Device" activity="Enum" startTime="8698" endTime="12926" duration="4228" prePendTime="4228" description="Intel(R) C600 series chipset SATA AHCI Controller">

So the worst timing was, once again, the LSI SAS 2 driver at 7.831 seconds.  While I do need the devices connected to the SAS HBA to be recognized, I went into Device Manager and disabled the LSI SAS HBA and performed the boot timing analysis again.  This time the boot timing gave me:

<interval name="PreSMSS" startTime="0" endTime="7462" duration="7462">
<interval name="SMSSInit" startTime="7462" endTime="18840" duration="11378">

I was able to decrease the PreSMSS phase by ~8.1 seconds, not surprisingly almost the same duration time shown by the LSI driver duration above.

I am guessing that this lengthy time is spent by the miniport driver enumerating its devices and initializing the HBA.  I can’t image why it would that long though.  There may be driver settings that would speed this up.  Unfortunately HP documentation appears to be non-existent.  I need my SAS and SATA devices to work, when connected to the LSI HBA, so I've re-enabled it in Device Manager.

The SMSSInit time is also longer than it should be but I have not had time to investigate that.  For now, by removing the LSI from the boot sequence, and moving the SATA SSD to the Intel SATA controller, I have been able to noticeably improve my boot time.

 I don't know why HP shipped with such boot time insensitive drivers and options ROMs.

[JasonG1974]

I was just told by customer support you had to run "workstation capable ssd's with prices starting at $700" yet in some specs here it appears we have the same ssd. 

I apologize if this is addressed elsewhere but is the above accurate? If not I still cant figure out how to install one on the HP Z820 regardless due to the lack of extra cords and psu not really accessible.  Course my tech level is novice at best.