Can HP Probook 440 or 450 G9 take a 4TB M.2 2280 SSD?

[NickBull]

I have a Probook 440 G9 running Win11Pro.  I bought a Crucial 4TB M.2 NVMe SSD to put in the primary slot, replacing the factory-installed SSD.  But when I boot, there's no WiFi or Mousepad.  I installed Windows without them and it boots fine but no WiFi or mouse (though a USB wireless mouse works fine)..  When I put the factory-installed M.2 SSD back in the slot, WiFi and Mousepad come back.

Does the 440G9 support a 4TB SSD?  If so, could there be a problem with my Crucial M.2?

I can still return the 440G9 and upgrade to 450G9 ... would that support a 4TB SSD? 

I can also still return the Crucial; is there another 4TB M.2 that would work better?

Thanks,

Nick

[TzortzisG]

Hi NickBull.

This is truly interesting. Apparently there is some sort of conflict between your PCIe drive and your BIOS (this in my opinion is slightly different than a drive compatibility issue), causing your touchpad and your Wlan card to be "invisible" to the UEFI firmware after the upgrade.

Personally, I avoid installing larger than 2TB drives, because sometimes when you cross that mark, you find that things don't work exactly as they should. I've posted on this on a very similar previous topic: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Can-a-Probook-450-G9-support-a...

The G9s definitely support large drives (4TB, 8TB). The previous (older) generation with TigerLake cpus was/is sold upgraded with 4 and 8TB PCIe drives by Amazon, Walmart, Newegg, etc, etc. YOUR 440 G9 laptop was/is sold with a 4TB drive by Newegg: Newegg HP ProBook 440 G9 4TB NVMe SSD. Obviously, they would have noticed if there was no wireless or mouse after the upgrade..... Could there be a problem with the Crucial drive? Don't think so. You haven't reported some kind of malfunction with the drive itself, like not being seen correctly, or the speed painfully low, or wrong (smaller) capacity seen by the BIOS. Just that wifi+mouse are disabled.

Will a 450 G9 have a better compatibility with 4TB drives? NO. 440 and 450 are basically the same model, but with different size screens. They share the same BIOS versions:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-probook-440-14-inch-g9-notebook-pc/2101000453

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-probook-450-15.6-inch-g9-notebook-pc/2101000499

WIll returning the Crucial drive and getting another brand make any difference? Possibly, but (again imho) not very likely. Crucial and Kingston both offer 4TB drives for your model on their pages. This means that they've tested the drives to work for this generation. You CAN try to see if another SSD model works better. Crucial has been known to be very compatible with HP laptops. Western DIgital is always my first choice for PCIe storage. As I said, it's possible that the specific brand has the issue, so you might give it a shot. What else can you do? Although I almost always advise against it: Updating BIOS version to latest is the only way to get rid of BIOS bugs/confilcts, IF these issues have been noticed by HP support and the fixes have been included in the new firmware. I already checked, and there is no mention of this bug or fix on any of the BIOS updates..... Finally, you can buy a 2TB drive which should work as expected.

[NickBull]

Thanks for your extended response, TzortzisG.

I returned the 440 and upgraded to a 450.  And I returned the Crucial and bought a new one of the same.

After initial setup of the 450, I used the free Crucial Acronis software and cloned the 450 to the Crucial.  Opened case, detached power cable, installed 4TB, re-attached power cable, closed case, held breath, pressed power switch: And it booted up.  Everything (including mousepad and Wifi) works.

I suspect that somehow the Windows Recovery USB that I created on the prior machine did not include mousepad and WiFi drivers, so when I booted from that, it couldn't see wife or mousepad.  All seems good, now.

Nick

[TzortzisG]

Yes, having no drivers will definitely do that for devices.... 😉

Obviously misunderstood your first post and thought you had (clean) installed Windows. Anyways, glad you got it all straightened out. Makes sense cause this is the first time I've heard of such an issue on any (brand) system after upgrading storage to a larger capacity. You can check Device Manager to see if everything is functioning correctly and the drivers are all correctly installed. You'll most likely see a question mark if there is any issue. The 450 G9 drivers can be downloaded from the second Selfservice link I posted above.

Take care!