Can you help me?
I wonder If it is possible to use HP Z Turbo Drive G2 256 PCIe SSD Drive in my configuration?
After installing this card it is not visible in BIOS nor in Windows in Drive manager nor in Win Device manager
I tried to install Samsung and Intel NVM drivers, the installation fails as the installer does not discover NVM drive

Can you guide me what steps should be done in order to install this drive in my system, or maybe it is impossible?

My current conf:
ASUS P9X79WS (X79 chipset) - BIOS 4802 (newest), MOBO Supports PCI 3.0
Intel i7-4930K
NVidia Quadro K2000 (Please note that this card is PCI 2.0 x16), the system works in GEN2 mode
2x SSD Samsung EVO 840 EVO 256GB
2x WD HDD 3TB setup in soft RAID (In BIOS the SATA controller is set in RAID mode, I use RSTe drivers (ROM 3.8.0.1029, driver 4.3.0.1542)
OS: Windows 10 x64 frequenty updated

After reading this forum some additional questions

1. As I do not need to boot from NVM (I just want to use it as storage) should I also update BIOS (mod) UEFI module? I guess not
2. Should I change my onBoard Controller to AHCI instead of RAID? I am not sure if it matters, I guess this is only for SSD and HDD connected directly to my MOBO as SATA drives?

Regards,
Sebastian

Hello Dieter,
Thank you for your help and suggestions!

I followed the instructions on installing NvmeExpressDxE.ffs into UEFI and flashing my BIOS, but unfortunatelly it did not work:
As before the drive is not discovered in Windows.
Windows is installed in UEFI mode.

In the mean time I read some more posts and I wonder should I also install the other nvm modules like Nvme, NvmeSmm and NVMEINT13 ??
But what I understood is that NvmeExpressDxE.ffs is enough, right? Also can you confirm the link on the instruction set is the most current one?

Another idea: I did some reading about HP Z Turbo Drive G2. HP is saying that it works only with their workstations Z440, Z640 and Z880 with some minimum BIOS
These workstations are based on Intel C612 chipset.

I have downloaded their the BIOS and checked with MMTool (version 5). I can see that there are NvmeExpressDxE and NvmeSmm modules.
Also in the history I can see that HP added support for this drive and then some fix in later BIOS releases.

Do you think it is possible to extract these models and install in UEFI for my X79 MOBO?
I have no experience in such stuff so I am a bit afraid I could mess my MOBO...

Is it possible to extract these modules then to check if they are different from other nvm related modules that were extracted by other users and used successfully?

Regards,
Sebastian

I am attaching the HP BIOS downloaded from their website

I extracted NvmeExpressDxE and NvmeSmm modules from HP BIOS file and added them to my BIOS as new modules (according to rules, described on this forum).
When extracting them I marked extracted uncompressed using MMTool version 5, and inserted them as compressed with link field unchecked with MMTool version 4.
These additional modules did not exceed the BIOS file size.
The size of extracted NvmeExpressDxE was larger from the one available on this forum for download. It was approx. 2kb larger.
After comparing installed modules in MMTool I've noticed that the size is different in HP BIOS and in my mod. Does it mean that these modules should be installed uncompressed? Does it matter?

It here a way to check if this insertion was successful ? Maybe something else need to be updated in order these modules are visible for BIOS?
The above modification did not change anything and the Z drive is still invisible in my system.

I changed SATA mode from RAID RSTe to AHCI it disabled my soft RAID 1 but I wanted to try if it has any influance on Z drive visibility.
Still, the HP drive is not visible in the system.
Are there any BIOS settings that might have some influence on drive visibility?

Do you have any more advices what could I try next?

I will add some additional info on HP Z Turbo Drive G2 found in some white paper:
"The HP Z Turbo Drive G2 is a half height, half length PCIe based add in board that plugs directly into a PCIe slot. It is an HP designed adapter card that is powered by Samsung’s SM951
(M.2 form factor) SSD technology. SM951 contains Samsung’s professional class MLC flash memory, a 3 core, eight channel UAX controller (designed specifically for PCIe) and firmware."

Regards,
Sebastian

I have tried to install Samsung module found >here< in my BIOS - does not work.
I am still looking for a solution before I decide to sell this drive.

@Fernando: Should all the modules I add to BIOS be compressed or rather uncompressed?

Another thing I wonder is if I buy a cheap PCIe NVMe M.2 adapter and put the samsung drive on it, would it make any difference than with an original HP PCIe card?
This HP card compared to standard PCIe NVM adapters has some additional chip on it, not sure what it is

Regards,
Sebastian

I have managed to install NVM in my system.
Here is what I did:

1. Bought a cheap M.2 to PCIe Card: I choosed LyCOM DT-120 - Lycom DT-120 M.2 PCI-e SSD to PCI-e Adapter Card
2. Extract NVMe modules from BIOS of ASUS X79 - DELUXE
3. Upgrade my BIOS with extracted modules
4. Move SM951 NVMe drive from HP card to LyCOM card

The drive is visible under Windows 10.
I did not try to boot from it, my only objective was to use it as a storage drive.

Do you thiink the HP card is broken or it contains some logic that works only on HP Workstations?
(Photo below)



Also The benchmark shows much lower performance I expected.
I installed NVM driver from Samsung website version 1.4.7.17.
On standard windows 10 driver performance was much worse
Is it because my PCI works in GEN2 mode (I cannot change it to 3.0 because of Quadro K2000 is GEN2) ? Should I expect higher performance?
(benchmark results below)



Regards,
Sebastian

Hy Guys,

i have also tried the HP Turbodrive Z with Samsung 851 SSD but i doesn't work too.
I have figured out, that the Turbodrive Z only works with HP Workstations and HP 600 and 800 G1 and G2 Desktops.
They have implemented something in the Firmware that checks the mainboard bios.

Best wishes Alex

Hy Fernando,

yes i have a very simple solution.
Just install the ssd from the turbodrive in an nvme pci express Adapter and everything works.

Best wishes from Austria

oh man i dont know why this thread never came up in searches but if this works, its a life saver ! just ordered a pci-e adapter. hopefully it works ! *crosses fingers*

iandroo888
Please note - HP Z Turbo Drive G2 contains AHCI version of the Samsung SM951. To support boot from this card, you need to embed "Samsung_M2_DXE" BIOS module.
[Guide] How to get M.2/PCIe connected Samsung AHCI SSDs bootable?
If the booting is not important, you do not need to embed anything.

the HP turbo drive "G2" is a NVME based SM951 SSD not AHCI

the HP Z series workstation Bios's are locked and checksummed to prevent any 3rd party changes
due to this you can not change the bios, as it will be rejected when attempting a bios upgrade

the HP SSD PCI-E card unlike 99.99% of the other pci-e ssd cards has jumpers to allow up to
4 ssd cards installed in the HP workstations.

I suspect the problem people are having with these cards in a non HP system is a conflict between the
motherboard ssd slot address and the hp card default address you can try setting the HP card address
from the default of 0 to any other (1-3) using the cards jumpers and see if that resolves the problem

3rd party SSD cards can not be set as they have no config jumpers
and possibly use the motherboards PCI slot ID for card configuration if using more than one ssd clone card?
( can anyone reply who has tried using more than one clone PCI-E SSD card in a system)