M.2 SSD Upgrade

[Jman117]

Hello Huffer. I am contacting you because i have the same laptop and am having the exact same issue. But here is the catch I bought an adata 120 gb m.2 2280 ssd and it isnt being recognized by my laptop.

[Huffer]

Same laptop as what?

[Jman117]

I have an hp envy m7-n109dx. Sorry i was reading through the forms and saw your comment.

[QuadTips]

Many of us have been trying to get the internal M.2 slot to work. To date no one that has that computer has been able to get it working.

Sorry.

jeff

[Jman117]

thankyou for letting me know. i was heartbroken to read about HP's Decision. rest assured i wont give in. i will find a way.

[Cloud_1]

The only way i know of to get the thing to work is to crack the bios and enable the port. Now why HP wont do that in a BIOS update for all us suckers who bought into thier products hype is beyond me.

Respectfully

Cloud_1

[frank777]

Hey, guys. Stop blaming HP. I found the solution.

My machine:  HP EliteBook 840 G2. I have a samsung SSD as my C drive. I want to install SanDisk x110 256GB SATA (size 2260) on my M.2 port. I have the exact same problem as everybody on this forum: Windows 7 fails to recognize the hardware. To make things simple, here's the solution: 

1. go to your "Computer Management", under "Storage->Disk Management", in addition to your existing disk, you should see a new disk. In my case, my old disk (drive c:) is Disk 0. Now I see another disk (Disk 1). Disk 1 is marked as "Unknown, 238.47 GB, Not Initialized". 

2). Select Disk 1 and Initialze it (in my case with MBR option).

3). After the initialization, Disk 1 is marked as "Basic 238.47 GB, Online". At this time you still cannot see the new disk on your Windows Explorer, because Disk 1 is not allocated yet. You need to format it (otherwise Windows doesn't know how to handle it).

4). Select the volumn of this disk to format/allocate it. Now you should see "New Simle Volume Wizard". In my case I assign D as the drive letter, choose default NTFS as file format and name the volume as SandDisk M.2 SSD and perform a quick format. It takes about 2 minutes. When it is done, your drive D shows up on your Windows Explorer. 

Before I figured this out, as many of you have tried, I checked my BIOS and couldn't see anything configurable that is related to M.2 port. Then I realized that this doens't have anything to do with hardware or BIOS. It's related to Windows 7/8/10. Before the new disk is initialized and formatted, OS only knows that a hardware is plugged into M.2 port, but doesn't know how to handle it. By initializing the disk, OS copies a small program to the header of the disk. After formatting it, OS finally knows how to read the disk and hence disply it on Windows Explorer. I do have several screen shots, but too busy to figure out how to post it. I'm 100% sure it will work for you. 

[GT_46L]

Why would we stop blaming HP when they've actually come out and stated that they've disabled the M.2 slot on certain models of notebooks?

I'm glad you got yours to work, but if the port is disabled, then no amount of fiddling with ANY settings anywhere is going to bear fruit - the laptop simply doesn't recognize the port exists, so it's never going to show up in either the BIOS, or in Windows. Obviously, you were lucky and your laptop does not have the port disabled. I also was lucky and have an Envy 17t-n000 in which the M.2 port is functioning; in fact, I use my 512GB Samsung M.2 drive as my Windows boot drive, and have a 2nd Samsung 1TB 2.5" SSD in my main HDD bay, which also works perfectly.

I'm sure others on here, who've tried without success to get an M.2 drive to work in their laptops, also tried to do the steps you did, but couldn't, because the drive just never showed up anywhere.

[frank777]

By the way, I'm a computer professional myself, heavy duty on the software side. Most of these hardware fixers have only high school deploma with probably a couple of months experience in putting parts together. They really don't know what they are talking about. I have similar experience with HP, DELL and Lenovo, just to name a few. You seldom meet a real good guy. Also never talk to their managers unless you want to waste your time. In this fast-changing industry, managers usually know much less technology than the first-line workers. Usually if a manager was promoted 5 years ago, his knowledge stopped there 5 years ago. Manager's job is to make numbers meet in this industry. However they ususally pretend to know something about it, so what they tell you is usually more misleading. Having said that for a computer hardware part to work (showing up in Windows), you need 3 parts: hardware, BIOS and OS (via drivers). Everybody knows the hardware. For BIOS, unless a part is configurable and the designers believe that you need to configure it, the part will not be displayed in BIOS display that you see. There is nothing to configure for M.2 port and it doesn't use any battery power if it is on. So usually you are not going see it in BIOS display. Now when it comes to OS drivers, it could be tricky. In this case, the driver detects the existence of a hardware on M.2 port, but doesn't have enough information to pass it to OS. So OS just shows, in storage management part, that there is a hardware detected there. As a Windows user, you have to provide some info or do somethings so that OS could access this piece of hardware. Just like many other technology issues, the problems often occur at the interface between systems, in this case hardware and software. To be fair, many hardware people are not familiar with software, and vise versa. So strickly speaking this is not HP's problem, or at least only HP's problem. If you buy a SSD from HP directly for a specific HP model, they might have the hardware initialized and pre-formatted for you. So you can plug it in and use it without any extra work. In my case I bought my SSD online for $60. The seller doens't know what computer/OS that I'm using, so natually it comes blank. I have to do everything myself. In HP/DELL/Lenovo or other computer companies, only a small group of hardware designers really understand how their machines work (parts work together), most other people just know how to do what other people tell them to do. If your problem fall into what they have been told, you have a lucky day. If your probelm requires deeper understanding, those "engineers" (I would call them fixers) probably have the same or even less knowledge that you do. Unfortunately that's how things work in technology industry. To think that HP purposely disables M.2 port so that they can charge your extra for enabling it is totally misunderstanding of how this industry works. The people who write the BIOS usually belong to that small group of designers/engineers that really undersand how their system works. I bet they are no more than 30 people. They are 50 layers/departments away from the sale and service management. To make a few extra service dollars is not their concern.  The other 5000 people in sale/service departments  just know what they are told to do. 

[GT_46L]

Let me explain this to you, as best as I understand it from the posts in this thread, without intentionally sounding argumentative or like I'm trying to start a fight - HP disabled INTENTIONALLY the M.2 port on certain models of their laptops, namely some sold at Best Buy, and there's nothing they're willing to do, no matter how much money an end user offers to throw their way, to enable that port. This was as much as stated so by HP to one or more end users in this thread. If you have one of those models with a disabled or non-functioning M.2 port, and you want to be able to use an M.2 SATA drive, your only recourse is to get rid of that model laptop, and either buy another HP laptop with a functioning M.2 port, or another manufacturer's laptop.

HP didn't disable the M.2 port so they could make more money by charging people to enable it, as they're unwilling to do ANYTHING to re-enable it.

Someone please correct me if I'm understanding the previous posts in this thread, as what I've just stated is my understanding of the situation.