HP Pavilion dv7 7008tx Storage upgrade

[Naftaliin]

Hello!

product: B3K25PA#ABG

serial: GOL-46507-

I want to install an SSD drive. Currently I have two 1TB 5400rpm drives + 32GB flash drive. The 32GB flash is somehow tied to my boot drive to improve practical speed by keeping some files on the SSD for faster loading.

In the user manual for my product it says that my laptop has support for 160GB SSD.

Does this really mean that larger SSD drives are not supported? If so then it would not be worth upgrading.

Also would it be possible to change the 32GB flash drive for a larger one? And if so then can that drive be confugured as a boot drive (disabelling hybrid storage)?  This way I could keep both 1TB drives.

[Huffer]

No the 32 gig mSSD cannot be used to boot from. You can replace the hard drive with any sized 2.5 inch SATA SSD. 160 gig was just the biggest HP offered at the time. Configuring your laptop to boot and run from the new SSD will be harder than most because it is set to RAID on the storage controller and we have to disable the 32 gig mSSD as an accelerator. In fact if you are going to install a main SSD it is best to just remove the 32 gig mSSD card.

[banhien]

Hi,

You have few options

1. Install larger capacity SSD up to the size of existing primary HDD (same size is much simpler) and you can run that way but the SSD cache would be useless because normally it is a bit slower than SSD.

2. Replace the cache SSD and convert it to a normal SSD then install OS on it. You need to prepare properly otherwise your machine won't run and yes, you have to disable RAID first.

Please check the following tutorial:

    http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/install-msata-ssd-tutorial

Good luck.

[Huffer]

@banhien

No, on this model the mSATA mSSD is not capable of being the boot drive. 

[banhien]

@Huffer

Thanks for the info.

[Naftaliin]

Thanks for these answers.

I most likely end up replacing one of my 1TB drives with an SSD if it would be faster than the mSATA drive and I have an extra 1TB drive too and not going to loose too much storage space.

But can you explain why on this model the mSATA drive cant be used to boot from? Why and how much slower is the mSATA slot? I thought that mSATA is the same as SATA but simply has sa PCIE mini connector.

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

Why because the BIOS is programmed such that if any drive occupies one of the SATA slots the mSATA never appears in the boot order. To be 100% accurate, it can be the boot disk but only if it is the only disk. Read/write speeds for mSATA and "regular" SATA are very similar. So the performance difference between a SATA mSSD and a 2.5 inch SATA SSD are negligible. So as I said, your optimum setup is to remove the mSSD and install a 2.5 inch SATA SSD in the main port, a mechanical drive in the second port. The second port is also not bootable, by the way. 

[Naftaliin]

OK. Thanks. This BIOS is indeed very restricted  and  I have not heard anybody  unlocking it.  It would be nice if HP would realease an update that would at least allow more boot options..