No mas. I yield. An inexpensive third-party PCIe card w/ multiple sata/sas ports will allow my Z800 to recognize 100% of the space available on my 3TB drives. And, I should be able to start actually using the computer instead of modifying and upgrading it (assuming the PCIe card is plug-n-play as expected).
Failed Solutions
- Initialize the Drive w/ GPT || Recommendations to initialize the drive w/ GPT instead of MBR outpaced any other erstwhile solution. Initializing incorrectly must be either really common or top-of-mind or both. It did not help my situation.
- Ubuntu Bug Related to Booting from A USB Drive || This was the most-obscure possible solution. Apparently Ubuntu 14.04 had a previously-squashed bug reappear. If you boot off of a USB drive or CD, HPA would be enabled, which somehow or another limits the size of disk the OS can recognize. This didn’t work either.
- Plug the Drive Into the LSI SAS Ports || According to HP documentation, SATA drives up to 3TB can be used if plugged into ports 2-5 of the LSI controller. I’m not sure what I did wrong, or what step I missed, but I could not make it work.
- Update the BIOS || The BIOS version was out of date on my Z800, so I updated it from within the BIOS (bios within bios). The BIOS is updated now, but the computer still only sees 2TB on the drives.