Sata Emulation Modes - HP Z640 Technical White Paper

Technical white paper | HP Z640 Workstation
Per Port Enable/Disable of SATA ports (SATA and sSATA controllers only)
Individual SATA and sSATA ports can be Disabled or Enabled individually from the BIOS menu under Advanced > Device
Configurations. Select Enable or Disable from the pull down menu for the Port that you would like to Enable or Disable.
External SATA (eSATA)
External SATA (eSATA) is supported on the SATA and sSATA controllers with an optional eSATA bulkhead adapter.
Ports can be configured individually as eSATA in the BIOS under Advanced > Device Configurations > eSATA Port n
under the SATA or sSATA controller. When a port is designated as eSATA, the port link speed may be limited to 3 Gb/s.
An option to eject the drive will be available from the Windows Taskbar Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media
applet. Disks included in a RAID array will not be visible in the Eject applet. The current OS disk may be visible in the Eject
applet but cannot be ejected. External drives can be hot plugged if the drive is compatible with hot plugging.
Hot plug or Hot unplug and surprise removal/insertion of internal drives is not recommended.

SATA Emulation Modes

The SATA and sSATA controllers are capable of being set to three different SATA emulation modes. Separate controls
are provided for SATA Emulation Mode in the BIOS under Advanced > Device Configurations > SATA Emulation Mode and
Advanced > Device Configurations > sSATA Emulation Mode.
• RAID1 (Default; ACHI + RAID capability with greatest flexibility for most users)
• AHCI (Required when using SEDs)
• IDE (Legacy mode, limited functionality - Not recommended)
TRIM Support for SSDs
TRIM keeps track of files that have been deleted but not erased on the drive to improve performance and help extend
the life of the SSD. TRIM is not an acronym, but is a command specific to SSDs and is typically represented by TRIM in all
upper case. TRIM is supported on individual non-RAIDed SSDs on all controllers and is supported on RAID 0 and 1 on the
SATA controller and RAID 0, 1, and 10 on the sSATA controller.
AHCI and RAID
The default SATA emulation mode on HP Workstations is RAID (RAID + AHCI) unless SEDs are installed. If SEDs are
installed, the SATA emulation mode will be set to AHCI. The SATA emulation mode can be changed in BIOS setup under
Advanced > Device Configurations, but changing the mode is not recommended and can result in boot failure
loss if the SATA emulation mode is changed after the OS is installed or if a volume already contains data. Always back up
your data before making any storage system changes.
RAID+AHCI
RAID+AHCI provides all of the benefits of AHCI with the added flexibility of RAID for configurations needing performance
or data redundancy. Even if you don't use RAID today, setting the SATA mode to RAID (RAID+AHCI) makes your system
RAID ready for the future. RAID (RAID+AHCI) is the preferred mode and default storage configuration SATA mode set in HP
Workstation BIOS.
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