[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.

[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