don’t put 6 Gig SATA drives in your HP PC’s

[Steve Kallevik]

What about 6G SAS or 6G Sata connected to the SAS ports in a Z800 (dual 6-core, Areca 1680ix is full)?

[Bob Zelin]

I have only tried the 6 Gig drives on an Areca 1880 6 gig SAS card – I have never tried it on a 1680x – I would like to ASSSUME that it would work, and that is backward compatible, but I have not tried it.

As a matter of fact, until I saw this HP notice, I ASSUMED that 6 Gig drives just plugged in and worked. I now question whether you can put a 6Gig drive into a MAC Pro, and have it “just work”. I just don’t know. Assumptions get me killed every time.

Bob Zelin

[Joshua Helling]

Thanks Bob,

That is really odd. Even if the SATA controller is just a SATAII 3Gb controller (which I believe it is), the drives SHOULD step down nicely and just run happily at 3Gb.

The fact that it doesn’t is disturbing as I would imagine that eventually the SATAII drives will start to dry up in favor of the SATAIII drives.

I will ping my buddy at HP and see what he can tell me on this issue.

Sincerely,

Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc.

[George Roberts]

Hey Joshua
Anything come from your buddy at HP? I just bought a WD 3tb drive for my hp xw4400, it recognises the drive but says its about 750MB not 3gb. Will make some more enquiries tomorrow.
Thanks
George

[Scott Harrison]

There has been a recent HP service message release on this issue, and it is pretty easy to find via google. The essence is that there was a problem with the SATA GenIII drives being able to autonegotiate down to SATA GenII or SATA GenI status with the HP workstations (likely a “timing” issue). HP now states that the problem is fixed on HP-source SATA GenIII drives. Those will work on the older workstations.

The caveat is that “third party” sources of the same drives likely will not have the fix and likely will not work with those workstations reliably.

So, the way I read this is that it is a firmware update on those SATA GenIII drives that fixes the problem, and that HP is not making that firmware update available on their drivers firmware updates to help with this issue. Buy GenIII from HP you’ll be OK. Otherwise, stick with GenII.

Scott

[Scott Harrison]

Here is the link to read from HP, dated late July 2012 after they figured out the fix:

https://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=110&prodSeriesId=3718645&prodTypeId=12454&objectID=c02711513&printver=true

The document to google for is: Document ID: c02711513

A few critical statements in the document:

“Third party 6Gb/sSATA hard disk drives are not supported on HP Workstations featuring only 1.5Gb/s (SATA Gen1) and 3Gb/s (SATA Gen2) SATA ports. HP has worked with the hard disk drive vendors so that all 6Gbps SATA hard drives provided by HP will work on 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s ports.”

“Third party 6Gb/s hard disk drives will more than likely not include the fix that allows proper operation on 3Gbp/s and 1.5Gbp/s ports. Third party 6Gb/s (Non HP) drives are not expected to work correctly.”

So, there is a fix, and it is virtually certain to be a firmware update. It would be great if HP would make that available via their driver pages, where they have other firmware updates. However, if their engineers figured out the solution they do deserve some benefit from that. Personally, I’ll be sticking with SATA GenII drives in my HP xw6400, xw6600, xw8400, and xw8600 workstations.

[Maurice O’driscoll]

Thanks for this useful information Bob, I was just about to buy some HDD for a backup. I see from HP’s info that the MAx size you can install is a 3TB. Perhaps you might be able to help me with what I want to do.
I wish to install 2 HDD in a mirror configuration, 1 for backup and 1 for fail-safe. Can you advise me as the the drives you would recommend?

Thanks

[Josh Hurtz]

i know this is a old post, but to anybody who comes here looking for a fix, i found one, im using a z200 workstation and i just installed a HGST 6tb sata 6gb/s drive
make sure new hard drive is GPT not MBR (you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard, its simple)
install Intel Rapid Storage Technology v12.5.0.1066 (if your on windows 7 , or just download latest if your on windows 10)
restart comp ( i had to twice)
now to go control panel-administrative tools-computer management, then on left side click disk management
now find your have drive , it will be the one that is colored black and say unallocated space right click and choose new simple volume and click next, that should give you the full space of the hard drive

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Josh –
my original post was made in 2011. That is a LONG time ago. None of this applies today in 2019.
Today, there is no issue in installing even a huge 14 TB Seagate Ironwolf in any modern Win 10 PC.
No special rules – just put in the drive, format it, and go to work. And in 2027, when someone finds this post, perhaps someone will say “what’s a SATA drive” or “you think that 14 TB is a huge drive ? “.

And believe me, I actually know “professionals” that are still using Mac Pro’s from 2006 and 2007. Do you know what I call these people ? Crazy !

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com