Frequently Asked Questions - HP Z1 G2 Technical White Paper

Technical white paper | HP Z1 G2 Workstation
Other limitations when SRT is enabled.
• Only one disk or RAID volume can be accelerated per system.
• Once a RAID volume is accelerated, a second RAID volume cannot be added to the same array.
• Matrix arrays (more than one RAID array sharing the same set of drives) are not supported.
• Once a solid-state drive is configured to be used as a cache device, the option to create a recovery volume is no
longer available.
• The maximum number of volumes allowed in the storage system is four. If the system has more than 4 volumes, the
RST application will not display options to accelerate.
Mini-SATA (mSATA) Solid State Drives
The Z1 G2 supports full length mSATA SSDs installed in the PCI Express Mini Card connectors. At boot, the mSATA card
will be detected and the interface will automatically be configured as a 6Gbps SATA port.
The mSATA SSD will appear in the option ROM (when multiple drives are connected to the systems SATA ports), and will
appear in the Intel® RST software GUI as any other SSD.
The mSATA SSD can be used for:
• OS Drive
• SRT* cache
• SRT* cache and data (256GB SSD > 64GB SRT cache + 192GB data)
• RAID with another drive for data protection
* Use with SRT is subject to the requirements and limits listed in the SRT section above
CAUTION: mini-PCIe memory cards and mSATA SSD cards look similar. Mini-PCIe memory cards require custom drivers
provided by the mini-PCIe card manufacturer. If you install a mini-PCIe memory card in your system, you will be able
to see the device in the Windows device manager, but the card will not function without custom drivers. The mini-PCIe
memory card is not compatible with mSATA and is not supported.

Frequently asked questions.

• I installed a Solid State Drive to use with SRT, but I don't see any option for acceleration.
The most common issues that prevent SRT functionality are:
– Your OS is also on a Solid State Drive? You can only accelerate HDDs.
– If your installed OS consumes the entire disk and did not leave room for SRT configuration metadata, the option to
accelerate will not be available. Use disk manager to shrink the last partition on HDD by 10MB. You should then see
10MB of unallocated space. After SRT setup this unallocated space will not be visible in disk manager.
– RAID mode is not set in BIOS. SRT uses RAID functionality. RAID mode must be set as the SATA mode in system BIOS
for SRT to function. (Do not change from AHCI to RAID mode if your OS is already installed. Changing SATA emulation
modes after OS install may make the system unbootable because the correct drivers for the new mode are not installed
in the OS.)
– The system contains a Self Encrypting Drive (SED) and has encryption active. Software applications that interact with
SEDs require that the SATA mode be set to AHCI. SEDs and SRT functionality are not compatible. (Do not attempt to
change SATA modes if your system contains a Self Encrypting Drive. Changing modes may result in failure to boot and
unrecoverable loss of all data.)
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