Embossed in the silver metal edge of the drive drawers is, vertically oriented, 0,1,2. I use a fine tip Sharpie marker to fill those in so they are easy to see forever.
Bottom drawer bay is 0 if I recall correctly. At the rear of each drawer recess are Foxconn "BlindMate" female receptacles so that when you slide the drawer in the male end of the drive meshes with that. For drive 0, your SATA type III SSD drive, you want the far other plug end of that BlindMate-attached cable plugged into the bottom right SATA type III gray port. They have labels at that plug end. The intended plug is at the very bottom right corner of the motherboard. A second SSD or HDD that ideally is SATA type III goes into the next bay up, bay 1, and the cable plug from that BlindMate receptacle goes into the next to the left gray port adjacent to the bottom right corner plug you already have populated.
A documents SATA type III or type II HDD or SSD goes into the top bay, bay 2. The cable plug from that goes into the next higher numbered SATA port in the series. Optical drive goes into the next. Those SATA ports 2-5 are above, rather than along the bottom edge (which are SAS ports).
If you don't use a documents drive and drawers 1 and 2 are empty just plug optical drive into the second SATA type III port, gray, next to SATA port 0 (at the very bottom right corner). The boot drive plug is ideally in the bottom right corner gray SATA port. The other ports along the bottom edge of the motherboard are SAS. You can see that swapping the plug ends around can get you a SATA boot SSD and two SAS or two SATA drives in RAID configuration using this approach. I don't do RAID now that I have acccess to SATA III modern reliable SSDs for these workstations.
I don't do SAS either. I usually only use a fast type III SSD at port 0 for our work computers. I used to use a type II or III large HDD at SATA port 1 for a home documents drive, but now use type II or III larger SSD for that because I'm not a storage hog. I have a need for speed.
If you use a 2.5" form factor SSD you need a HP adapter (654540-001 or -002) to shift the SATA male end leftward to mesh properly with the BlindMate receptacle. Those are built for a 3.5" form factor drive, and the HP adapter noted is my favorite now. Those have been posted in here about ad nauseum. Made by Foxconn, for HP, not the "tool less" HP version, just as good, and reasonably priced. Uses 4 M3 short screws... hence the "needs tool" version at 1/10th the cost.
eSATA.... I always have a passive adapter eSATA port open on every HP workstation's backplane from one of the last two SATA port plugs.... port 4 or port 5 (up above and to the left of the SATA III two gray ports). I do a lot of Acronis image captures or clone building via that. Very handy to us.
