Not many of us know that HP put out some advisories about significant "issues" related to using non-HP SATA generation 3 hard disc drives in their xw generation of SATA generation 2 workstations. The use of HP or non-HP SATA2 drives in these SATA2 workstations did not produce the problems, and the HP advice was to only use HP source SATA3 drives in these SATA2 workstations. The HP firmware engineers seem to have figured out the solution, but that was via HP firmware, reserved for HP sourced drives. It was not that all non-HP SATA3 drives would see this issue, but the wording indicated quite a large percentage would.
The Z400, Z600, and Z800 workstations also are SATA2, as is the Z200, and many others. You start getting SATA3 on the ZX20 generation. It turns out this issue also applies to some non-HP SATA3 SSDs:
We came up against it initially in some xw workstations in which our IT guys used non-HP SATA3 Samsung EVO 850 SSDs with the included EMT01B6Q firmware, which crippled the workstations badly.... very slow boot, odd loss of USB ports, etc. If the same Acronis image was cloned onto my favorite Intel 320 Series 300GB SATA2 SSD there never was a problem in these and other HP SATA2 workstations.
We had to remove the SSDs, have them attached as a secondary drive to a utility workstation, firmware update them to EMT02B6Q, then DBAN low level reformat them (which takes some time, but even zeros out the boot sectors that normal formatting does not reach), then use the Windows Disk Management utility to set the now-raw SSD to MBR partition, and finally do the long-type NTFS formatting, and then proper clone on of the Acronis image.
That fixed all the EVO 850 Pro SATA3 SSDs. My advice is to do this as a critical first step for any non-HP SATA3 SSD before you put it into service on any of the HP SATA2 workstations. I also do exactly this firmware update (if available)/DBAN process for any SATA2 or SATA3 SSD or HDD I get new or used off eBay before putting them into service on any workstation..... I want to be cautious with them. I have also seen a few drives used with server software previously that could not boot on our workstations until I ran them through DBAN. Only thereafter could I properly partition and format them, and assume it is clearing some code on deep sectors that had been preventing normal function otherwise.
I have liked the Intel SSDs and Intel ToolBox software quite a bit more than Samsung SSDs and the Samsung Magician software, but these EVO 850s are working just fine now. That DBAN software is available as a free download (what I use) or a DBAN-code-based purchased version (different name and the purchased one is "certified"). If I get a reluctant drive I'll attach it as the only drive to SATA port 0, and boot from the CD, and navigate to it that way. Otherwise it can be attached as a secondary drive to the boot drive (but you still boot off the CD). And, very rarely I might have to do that but also change SATA emulation to IDE Separate for my utility xw6400 workstation. Don't forget to set it back to RAID + AHCI when done. Samsung Magician 1.9.7 is the last one that will work on XP, which is the OS I happen to still be using on my utility workstation for several reasons.
DBAN Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darik's_Boot_and_Nuke
DBAN download: