Z Turbo drive G2

[Yannis6]

I would like to make a Z turbo drive pcie card G2 to work on HP Z800 workstaion. Not for a boot drive but just as a second hard drive.

Has anyone done this succefully?

[SDH]

Yannis6, Welcome. Lots of good info in here, but the forum's search feature is not exhaustive. You'll find important tips via google archived in the forum when you dig that way too.

I've been working with the Zx00 workstations, version 2, for years now, and it has become a bit of a hobby. I just finished a project to shift a Z600 v2 up to our home library after the souped up Z400 v2 I had here finally started to go bad. This Z600 v2 has a HP Texas Instruments PCIe card that gives it USB3 capabilities ("2x2" with 2 front and two rear). It also has the HP Oxford chipset PCI card Revision C which gives it a serial port and a parallel port for the old HP LaserJet 6p printer here. These Z600 v2 workstations have a memory controller that lets them run the 1866 MHz DDR3 ECC Buffered server memory that is the fastest a Zx20 can ever go too, but that memory will be auto downregulated to 1333 (the fastest a Zx00 can ever go). It is an inexpensive way to get excellent memory that can be shifted to a Zx20 later.

Review the page HERE for early info on use of the Kingston HyperX Predator AHCI-controller M.2 stick in the Zx00 workstations. A PDF archydatasheet from Kingston is attached below, and these sticks are rare now. I've been using them for years, and they are significantly faster than a 2.5" form factor SSD. Remember that these Zx00 workstations are all SATAII technology on the SATA side of things so when you add in a boot applications M.2 SSD that is running at the faster PCIe Gen2 speeds you really notice the change. Here's the good stuff:

1. I've been working on getting these to work under Windows 11 with success. I've been running on W11 22H2, and just yesterday did the upgrade to W11 23H2 on the two Z600 v2 workstations I have running with the Predator as the boot drive. I use my "hybrid" technique I've posted on in the forum; there are other methods including using Rufus which has been posted about here by forum experts DGroves and Paul_Tikkanen.

2. There are a few things about the ZTD G1 and G2 to know. Those essentially are identical except that the G2 has that nice big heatsink. A little-known fact is that HP engineered a "kill switch" into those so that they will only work on HP workstations that know to send out a small signal to them that it is OK to run. If you try to use those in another brand of computer, they will act dead. Same if you try to use those in a HP computer/workstation that does not send out that small signal... they act just as dead in those too. If you google "Z Turbo Drive Q1" you will discover that a company with an electrical engineer who had some spare time, and a good boss, and was able to discover this and solve it. By removing a tiny Q1 transistor from the front face of the Z Turbo Drive G1 or G2 PCB they will work perfectly on HP and non-HP computers that they were not intended to. These are high quality highly engineered PCIe cards, and I guess HP did not want to share them with other brands. There is a strong indication that the Q1 kill switch is not present in the ZTD Quad Pro, and hopefully also not in the ZTD Dual Pro.

3. I bring this up because I discovered an easy quick way to remove the Q1 transistor. Cut the single thin top contact with a scalpel/exacto knife blade and fold up and down a few times on the two bottom thin contacts. Those will break free due to metal fatigue of the soft tin-coated copper alloy contacts, and now the ZTD/Predator is ready to use in a Zx00. I have one of those "Q1-out" ZTDs running my Predator M.2 boot drive in this Library Z600 I'm typing on. The Predator has to be one of the AHCI-controller versions, and that controller runs via PCIe Gen2 technology. Thus, it has to be in at least a PCIe Gen2 slot. The M.2 sticks virtually all run on x4 electrical lanes.

4. You may know that HP used two AHCI-controller Samsung OEM M.2 sticks... The PM941 XP941(PCIe Gen2 technology) and the later faster better SM951 (PCIe Gen3 technology but will only run at Gen2 in a Zx00 if in a Gen2 PCIe slot; Gen3 in a Zx20 if in a Gen3 slot). There also is a NVMe-controller version of the SM951... that won't work my way in these Zx00 or Zx20 workstations. That will work in a Zx40 workstation. Removing Q1 does not injure performance of the ZTD G1 or G2 cards in any HP workstation.

5. I tried to clone my Predator build over onto a ZTD that has the Q1 transistor out and an AHCI-controller SM951 in it... could not get it to boot but BIOS could see it. So, there is hope. I did not try that as a second non-boot drive, however. When I get some time I'll capture an image of this build, clone it onto a 2.5" SSD, boot off of that, and see if a SM951 AHCI-controller in a "Q1-out" ZTD will work as a "second" non-boot drive. That will take a while to get around to. You need to change one of the green ZTD jumpers from default if you're going to run two of them, to give each a unique device id. I keep the boot jumpers at default (all far right) and move any one of the jumpers on the secondary ZTD over leftward.

6. You may have heard about DGroves' method of getting a NVMe M.2 stick to boot in the Zx20 generation. Kudos to him for that and all his other ZTD tips, but I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. 

I'll post a few pics here shortly for you.

[Yannis6]

SDH thank you very much for your reply. It was really helpfull.

[SDH]

Happy to help. Attached are 3 pics showing the Kingston Predator M.2 AHCI-controller drive in the modified "Q1 out" Z Turbo Drive, mounted in a HP heatsink bought used off eBay. Those low profile heatsinks were originally for use in the G4

workstations that do not require use of the PCIe card approach. Rather, they have M.2 sockets built into their motherboards. There are many aftermarket heatsinks that could be used, but these are nice because they maintain the ZTD as a "single-slot width" device. That HP part number is 919952-001. There is a -002 one also but they look identical and cost more.

It is a tight fit with that partially hidden single lower capacitor you can see on the ZTD so I ended up having to get the M.2 stick in the heatsink off the card (with the silver hold down arms attached properly) before I screwed the whole thing onto the ZTD.

Overall, the ZTD G2 is a better way to go with its included heatsink but I had some spare ZTD G1 versions I wanted to use up this way. Regardless, it is important to make sure that you get the small special black plastic/brass milled HP hold-down screw (it has a metric M1.6 x 0.35mm thread screw). Those are easy to lose and hard to find on eBay by themselves.

Predator in place

Note where Q1 is on PCB...Ready to install...

[Yannis6]

SDH , for one more time, thank you. Really helpful. I will try to remove q1. I have already bought z turbo g2 so I have nothing to lose. 

[SDH]

Three more pics to give you some ideas. The ZTD G1 and G2 cards have a HDD activity-out port that goes to a header on the motherboard. This seems to work better in the ZTD Dual Pro than with the ZTD G1 and G2 cards in my experience.

The lower red cable going to the backplane is for eSATA interface to the motherboard's SATA5 (sixth) port. In the BIOS that port can be set for eSATA use which I guess is a bit different from regular SATA.

[SDH]

On cutting that top single contact... it is tiny and soft but takes a few scores. I pull the blade across it in only one direction so I get a feel for it and good control, with some pressure. You can feel when the blade tip drops off the contact. There only is the fiberglass of the PCB beneath it but be careful to not slide the blade too far rearward (towards the green jumpers) on each cut. It took only about 6 slices across that contact and then you're through. It is easy thereafter to just fold that transistor up and down about 10 times on the two remaining contacts and the transistor falls off.

[DGroves]

the z800/600 systems are pre UFI/UEFI, as such they will not boot ANY current nvme drives

as SDH stated the HP "AHCI" turbo G based cards with ahci ssd's are the best solution

however the discontinued samsung 950pro ssd does have the necessary nvme boot code in it's  firmware, you can also use some older datacenter ssd's like the REVO x2 pci-e cards which also implement the necessary boot code but unless you like tinkering with computers/software i no longer recommend this way same for using a software based method to preload the nvme code on these workstations

if you want to go this route "PM" me and i'll give whatever help i can depending on my free time

[SDH]

To the OP... what is your goal?

From your original question it appears that you want a faster large documents drive. You don't say if you're already using a SATA 2.5" form factor SSD for one or both already. The Predator M.2 approach I described got me a significantly faster boot/applications drive. 

Remember that these Zx00 workstations are limited to SATAII speeds, not SATAIII speeds as far as SATA drives are concerned to my knowledge. The fastest large documents drive to my mind would be to use a large capacity 2.5" SSD that is either SATAII or SATAIII. The SATAIII ones will only run at SATAII speeds but that is still a whole lot better than running a large SATAII speed HDD. In my first Z600 v2 that I got running on the Predator M.2 boot drive I put in a used enterprise HP 2TB SATAII 2.5" form factor SSD and that has been serving me well ever since. I don't need massive size for my documents drive.

DGroves has been an IT enterprise level specialist through all these years and has much experience with the HP Z8xx series of workstations. He'll have added advice about your situation, but he needs to know what you really want regarding speed and size. Some of these earlier workstations have size limitations that he will know off the top of his head. IIRC 2TB is the limit in size for the boot drive in a Zx00 workstation. You won't find a Predator or SM951-AHCI M.2 stick anywhere near that!

Here's some info for finding a SM951-AHCI including some HP part numbers. You can PM me if you need some help on pulling that off... I'd only recommend getting the 512GB version personally, and they don't come bigger:

SM951-AHCI (MZHPV128HDGM MZHPV256HDGL MZHPV512HDGL)
793099-001 IS 128 SINGLE SIDED, AKA MZ-HPV1280
793100-001 IS 256 SINGLE SIDED, AKA MZ-HPV2560
793102-001 IS 512 DOUBLE SIDED, AKA MZ-HPV5120

EDIT: The above HP part numbers can help you find one of the faster PCIe Gen3 compatible SM951 AHCI-controller M.2 sticks that work great as a boot or documents drive in the next Zx20 generation of HP workstations mounted in either a ZTD G1 or G2 with or without the Q1 transistor removed. However, I could not get one of those 512GB HP 793102-001 sticks to work in a Z600 in a ZTD with the "Q1-Out" modification as a boot drive. The OP for this thread later explains that he has been able to use a NVMe-controller M.2 stick in his Q1-Out modified ZTD card but as a non-boot drive. I will test that here in my Z600 also and post results later in this thread.

[Yannis6]

I think everything works fine. My initial thought was to have a secondary disk with the maximum write/read speed. I think this have been accomplished.

I don't' t think (even with raid 0) i can achieve the speed shown at the attached picture with a sata 2.5" ssd disk.

Thanks SDH

The Z turbo G2 works on an HP Z800 with a Samsung SSD980 NVMe M.2 SSD!!!