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Archived This topic has been archived. Information and links in this thread may no longer be available or relevant. If you have a question create a new topic by clicking here and select the appropriate board.
HP Recommended
z820 workstation
Microsoft Windows 7 (64-bit)

I need to upgrade my Z820 Workstation boot drive and was hoping I could get recommendations as to largest available SSD drive that would be totally compatable with my system. Currently using 600 gig boot drive that came with the build.

2 REPLIES 2
HP Recommended

FJEENT,

 

The largest capacity SSD currently available commercially is 4TB: the Intel P3608 (PCIe, MLC $9,300),  Samsung 850 Evo (SATA $1,500), and Samsung PM863 (SATA $2,000).  There are a number of 2TB SSD's that are not nearly as costly, including the Samsung 850 Evo ($706) and Crucial MX300 ($550) 2TB drives might be a might be good options. For comparison, an 850 Evo 1TB costs $339 and 500GB is $200.

 

Another approach, which is the one I use, is to have a fast M.2 drive with the OS/Programs- in the proposed system that could be a 480-525GB and that is followed by a suitable size drive for active projects followed by a large capacity conventional mechanical drive. 

 

The drive configuration in the current principle office sytem:

 

HP z620_2 (2017) > Xeon E5-1680 v2 (8-core@ 3.6 / 4.1GHz)  / 64GB DDR3-1866 ECC Reg / Quadro P2000 5GB / HP Z Turbo Drive M.2 256GB (= Samsung SM951 AHCI) + Intel 730 480GB + 2X Seagate Constellation ES.3 1TB /  825W PSU / Windows 7 Prof.’l 64-bit 
 
[Passmark Rating = 6166 / CPU rating = 16934 / 2D = 820 / 3D= 8849 / Mem = 2991 / Disk = 13794] 4.24.17 

 

The 256GB boot drive is ample in my use as the C: drive is 147GB.  And, the 480GB data drive is more than ample as the active files total only 54GB. It is possible to have the C: drive and active files on the M.2 but the disk performnace was not any better. The partition with libraries, program, and media totals about 180GB.

 

In some ways, dividing the boot and data drives makes sense from the idea of parallel read/write, but really SSD's access time is so good it doesn't matter,  but a  pair of smaller drives is much less expensive. 

 

If the decision is to use an M.2 boot drive, be aware that the zX20 systems do not natively recognize NVMe as a boot drive, and as C:, it will need either AHCI or a Samsung 950 Pro (maximum capcity = 512GB) that provides a "legacy BIOS" module so the NVMe memory can be recognized.  There are some z820's on Passmark listed as using NVMe boot drives: the  SM951 NVMe and  the excellent Intel 750 1.2TB and 800GB NVMe,  but I'm assuming that those systems  have had the BIOS edited to include an NVMe module.  That's a quite technical task involving detailed registry edits, and if the Samsung 950 Pro 512GB has enough capacity as a boot drive, the process is much easier.

 

Cheers,

 

BambiBoomZ

 

 

 

HP Recommended

Thanks much for the info BambiBoomZ ... I'll do some research n the drives you mentioned ... also looked at a Toshiba 960GB drive that I thought would get me over the hump for like $285 ... but wnated some other options to look at.

 

Thanks again!

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