Installing a second ssd drive

[Chakki1980]

Good afternoon. I want to install a second ssd drive in my laptop. Tell me, what do I need to buy for this? Which hard drive should you choose? Where should I connect it on the motherboard?

[Jupitero]

Hello.

Your laptop has three (3) storage slots and you can fill them all if you like. Can you identify your current SSD model?

One storage slot is for 2.5" SATA drive and it sits in a corner next to battery. SATA is considered a legacy connection these days, but SSD and hard drives are still produced and available. SATA SSD's top at about 500MB/s speeds and are perfectly fine for many tasks that do not require highest storage speeds. 2.5" SATA HDD's are also available but they are much slower, can break much more easily from shocks (dropped laptop) and consume a bit more power.

Two slots are of type M.2 2280, situated between the 2.5" drive and the CPU fan, and they can use either SATA or NVMe drives. NVMe drives are many times faster than SATA because of the direct PCIe bus connectivity, and the price difference is minimal these days, so NVMe is recommended.

I'm trying to decipher The Maintenance and Service Guide for your laptop model - if you already have an M.2 drive installed, you can also populate the second one with caveats: If the primary M.2 drive is a SATA drive, then the secondary drive must also be a SATA drive - for some reason - but I guess in that case you could just install the NVMe drive in the primary slot.

The 2.5" or M.2 drives can be from any manufacturer and can have as much space as you want, they go up to 8TB or so.

The 2.5" drive must be no higher than 7.0mm.

M.2 drives must be of type 2280, which means lenght of 80 mm. Your laptop has PCI Express 3.0 bus, so the NVMe drives should ideally be PCIe 3x4 for best speed. PCIe4 drives will also work but offer no benefits. The NVMe drive must not have a heatsink.

[Chakki1980]

Good afternoon.
Thanks for your reply.
My main drive is NVMe SAMSUNG MZVLW256. As far as I understand from your answer, I can buy a second similar disk and it should install without problems.  Did I understand correctly?. 

Tell me, according to the photo, where can I connect the second disk?
Should I make any changes to the BIOS after installing the second disk?
Thank you.

[Jupitero]

Hello.

Sorry for a late answer.

Yes, you can install a similar SSD. As long as it is NVMe and the physical size is 2280 (most popular) you are fine. The SSD can of course be more spacious, no limit there.

The place for the secondary SSD is right next to the old one, between it and the fan. The socket with the 17152 text on it. The orientation is just reversed 180 degrees. There are [Personal Information Removed] on Youtube on how to install and NVMe SSD, it is very easy.

The NVMe is secured with a screw, but I can't see 100% from your photo whether there is a screw. If there is no screw, you can use the screw from the optional WWAN (4G/5G) your computer doesn't have. (the antenna cables are for it)

There should be no reason to enter BIOS, your computer and Windows will autodetect the new drive. Only if you wanted to change the boot order, a visit to BIOS would be necessary.