HP Z620 boot from nvme issue

Special Topics NVMe Support for old Systems
1

I have been trying to build myself up a Z620 workstation for a while now, and I think I finally have all of the parts that I need and this is giving me gout. It’s my understanding that that as long as you have the newest firmware, one is supposed to be able to boot from a NVME drive in a Z620 workstation.

There are lots of different posts across the internet and they don’t all seem to agree with one another and a lot have old, outdated information.

I have the official Z-Turbo adapter cards; I’ve tried a HP branded Samsung SM951, as well as a couple of other drives I had laying around; and I’ve tried toggling all of the bios options around that I can think of to try, storage controller mode, AMT on/off, etc… I’ve also tried a couple of other pci-e adapter cards as well as a intel p3600. I can install windows from a usb drive, like I would expect to, but after it reboots, I get the no bootable media error if I remove the usb stick. The NVME drive also does not show up in boot selection if I select the boot menu. I have the newer boot block date motherboard, as I am abler to use the V2 processors. I have the newest bios installed, but I have not updated the Intel ME because I’m not sure that would have anything to do with it.

Any ideas anyone?

2

Mods apart… as you say latest bios doesn’t need it and already have NVMe support.
(UEFI x64 OS)

Step 4

[HowTo] Get full NVMe Support for all Systems with an AMI UEFI BIOS - Special Topics / NVMe Support for old Systems - Win-Raid Forum (level1techs.com)

HP Z Turbo G1
Solved: Is HP Z Turbo Drive G2 compatible with the Z620 workstation? - HP Support Community - 5616398

3

Are there any currently manufactured ahci drives that would work?

4

Your making a question, that only a user with the same machine and identical situation can give you that answer, i dont have or had a Z620, as we know…every system have its own peculiar settings/requirements/compatibility…and this is a server class system.
For a M.2 AHCI disk no NVMe DXE is needed or controller used, as you probably know.
Cant help more on this, good luck.

5

To be able to boot off an AHCI supporting M.2 SSD like the Samsung SM951 the mainboard BIOS must contain a specific DXE Driver module named “SAMSUNG_M2_DXE”.

1 Like
6

I guess what I was asking is are there still any newly manufactured drives that are ahci, or is everything on the secondary market?

7

Not much ww as NVMe is a standart now… here a few new in Europe, you’ll have to “dig” a bit more…

M.2 PCIe AHCI

And PCIe AHCI