Hello Again,
Following my recent apparent failure of the z620_2 (E5-1680 V2) motherboard and subsequent purchase of a replacement (en route), I am preparing z620_2 for reinstallation of Windows 7 plus programs to an HP Z Turbo Drive 256GB AHCI (G1) (=Samsung SM951 AHCI).
The conventional method to install a PCIe M.2 drive is to prepare a USB flash drive of 8GB + by creating a single, clean FAT32 formatted / GPT partition, load an installation version of Windows - typically from a Windows ISO, and set that version to be bootable from a USB drive- typically by moving and renaming certain files.
My concern is to create the USB installation of the Windows version optimized for the z420 / z620.
Two ideas to create this version:
1. The Z Turbo Drive arrived with Windows installed and includes HP Recovery Partition of 12.08 GB, so I've never actually installed Windows to the Z Turbo. It's logical that it's not possible to install Windows from one partition to another on the same drive, so I'm assuming it's setup on a USB drive.
The folders on the Recovery partition (10.3GB) are:
boot
efi
FIRTOOLS
sources
1
bootmgr efi
wpeinit
Q: Can I simply copy that contents of the recovery partition to the USB flash drive and set the boot order accordingly?
2. I also have the recovery DVD's from z420_3 and have seen a procedure in which the files from installation DVD's are copied to the flash drive and a couple are renamed so they will boot from a USB drive.
The best assistance would be to find the elusive HP document entitled along the lines of: "How to Install Windows 7 in UEFI Mode from USB Drive to HP Z Turbo Drive". I'm quite surprised that these expensive and unconventional drives are not more prominently documented. I must have missed them! There are pages of drawings of plugging it into a PCIe slot, but how is it organized to run the computer?
Thanks!
BambiBoomZ