Upgrading to SSD on HP ENVY 15t-j100 Quad Edition

[urgobi]

Thanks for the update. I am going to install Samsung EVO SSD 250 GB. But just wondering on the recovery disc.

What are the options ?

1. I should be be creating recovery OS from SSD after i install SSD. The recovery software from HP will not allow me to create disc from SSD

2. I can create recovery OS disc from HDD and that may not work on SSD after i install

So both the option doesnt look like will work if i install SSD and had any crash.

Any help/guidance will be appreciated

[Vachsen]

You have to make the recover "disk" by using a 32GB USB thumb drive and the computer booted to the original installed HDD.  But that doesn't help you make the new SSD drive.  It only helps you recover if things go bad, and only to the original HDD.

To make the new SSD bootable drive, boot with the original HDD drive installed, connect the new SSD drive with a USB adapter (I recommend using one that has an external power supply), plug it into the computer like a USB flash drive, then use EaseUS Partition Master Pro to clone the original HDD to the new SSD.  Once cloning is complete, shut the computer down and swap the HDD with the SSD, making sure you are protected from static.

The partitions won't align because the SSD is smaller than the HDD.  I believe the "Auto" method works but I used the "Manual" method, keeping all partions exactly the same except the big one that holds the OS.  That one I scaled down.

Once the drive is cloned and you are running on the SSD, you can use EaseUS Partition Master to remove the last partition, which is the recovery software, and join it to the large, main partition.

Once you are confident the SSD is working, and perhaps after the warrantee is over, you can add the HDD to the second bay (if your computer has one) using a second drive bay adapter available from HP.  You have to reformat that drive.  And you can recover the original OS using the 32GB USB recovery drive with the original HDD, if you need to.  But I wouldn't trust the USB recovery drive since I have never successfully rebuilt a drive with it.

So basically, no, the USB recovery disk doesn't help you with recovering from a SSD problem and there is no way to make an HP, USB recovery disk for the SSD.  However, EaseUS Partition Master Pro will make images of the SSD drive to any drive and use it as a recovery "image".  In fact, you could write the image to the old HDD drive as a file on the main partition, keeping your old HDD a bootable drive for your laptop.  So there are still recovery options.

[Vachsen]

If you want to read more on my adventure to move to an SSD, here is another post to read:

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-Systems-and-Software/Converting-to-SSD-Drive-for-Boo...

[Engineer2014]

Hey Sparkles,

I am glad I searched before creating a new thread !

I am looking to buy the ENVY 15t-j100 Quad, without the mSSD. Once I have the laptop, I plan to upgrade my ITB , 5400 rpm HDD to a SSD. The ITb drive is a 2.5-inch small form factor (SFF) drive.

I am looking at Samsung's SSD 840 EVO 2.75mm mSATA 120GB, which has a mSATA form factor. Dimmensions: 2.00” x 1.18” x 0.15”.

http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/memory-storage/MZ-MTE120BW#

 I am not sure if this Samsung SSD will fit, is there someway to check?

[Engineer_2013]

Hey Urgobi,

Can you share your experience using a Samsung EVO?

[urgobi]

I am yet to install the SSD. I will share the experience once the installations are completed.

[Sparkles1]

Hi Engineer214,

I understand you are interested in a 15t-j100 Quad Edition with the 1TB drive and you then wish to install a SSD.

Here is a link to HP ENVY 15 Notebook PC and HP ENVY TouchSmart 15 Notebook PC Maintenance and Service Guide, please note page 23 item 22 for a list or recommended Hard drives for this notebook. 

I hope this is helpful

[Engineer_2013]

Hello Sparkles,

The drives listed in the service manual cost about twice as much as similar drives in the Samsung EVO series.

I found out the info I was looking at ! The 1TB 5400 rpm drive with SFF has dimns: 2.75" x 3.94" x 0.37" [9.5mm]. The Samsung EVO has the same dimmensions except the height which in this case is 7mm. The 2.5mm difference shouldn't cause much of an issue as the hole patterns are the same, and the drive is mounted in a "carriage" when it is inserted in the bay.

[newhpenvyuser]

I just bought a HP envy 15t Quard without mSSD,  then I bought an mSSD from Amazon. It's been some work to make the windows drive onto the mSSD and boot from there. Here is what I did, and hope it may offer some help. 

1) Login into windows, run "disk Management" and shrink the windows drive C: to about 100GB.

2) Following this url http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows, and make a bootable USB stick.

3) Poweroff windows. Install the mSSD.

4) Plug the USB drive into the laptop.

5) Power on the laptop, press ESC key immediately about once per second, until you see a boot menu.

6) Press F9 to enter boot device menu, and choose to boot from the USB drive.

7) Boot into Linux without installing it. Open up a Terminal window. Make sure /dev/sda is the SATA 5400RPM drive, and /dev/sdb is the mSata.

😎 Run this command: dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

9) It takes about 40 minutes for a 240GB mSSD.

10) Run "sudo gparted" to load the the partition manager. Delete the recover partition from the mSSD. WARNING: delete the recovery partition from mSSD, NOT the 5400RPM SATA DRIVE.

11) Poweroff and remove the 5400RPM SATA drive.

12) Power up the laptop, and you'll see a lightning fast boot process.

NOTE: if you skip step 10) and keep the recovery partition, you will see a very slow boot up process in step 12). The recovery partition is at the end of the disk, way beyond the 240GB range. When windows BitLocker service tries to determine if it's a crypted volume, it keeps getting timeouts. BitLocker service is a very low level service and impacts all disk access as a result. If you see this, just be patient. It takes a few hours to boot up and let you login. But once you login, you can run diskpart and delete the non-existent partition.

[newhpenvyuser]

In step 😎 above, you may have to prefix it with sudo:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

If you'd like reduce the time by half, you can also do this:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=120000

This works only when the C: drive has been shrinked to less than 110GB. This will reduce the copy time by half to about 20 minutes.