Adding an SSD to Pavilion 570-p026na desktop PC

[atomicgold]

I want to add an SSD to act as a boot drive for my Pavilion 570-p026na desktop.  Both SATA sockets are taken with the existing 2TB HDD and the DVD drive, though one option would be to use the socket currently occupied by the DVD, because I rarely use this. The Willow 2 motherboard has an M.2 key M socket, and ideally I'd like to use this.

I've tried the Crucial scanner and contacted their support team and they dont have any option compatible with my desktop which makes me worried that the M.2 SSD isnt an option.

1)  Will an M.2 SSD work with my PC?

2)  If it is an option, given that the M.2 socket has the M key, would I need to choose an M.2 SATA or NVMe SSD?

Thanks for any advice.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

Yes, you can use a M.2 SSD as the boot drive.

I recommend that you temporarily disconnect your current boot drive before installing Windows on the SSD and make sure it works fine before connecting the drive back up.

It appears the motherboard your PC comes with supports NVMe SSD's.

Why pcie? - HP Support Community - 8090368

[atomicgold]

@Paul_Tikkanen - thanks for your help.

Just to confirm that I have successfully installed an M.2 SSD in my Pavilion 570-p026na desktop as the windows boot drive leaving user files on the existing HDD.

I used a Crucial P2 CT250P2SSD8 250GB M.2 NVMe SSD (Crucial support couldnt confirm compatibility with my PC, although the following link gave me confidence that it would be ok: https://www.crucial.com/compatible-upgrade-for/hP-Compaq/pavilion-570-p026).

After fitting the card and restarting, I went to Computer Management / Storage / Disk Management where the new drive was recognised and prompted me to initialise as a GPT drive.

I used Macrium Reflect (free non-commercial edition) to clone the existing HDD to the new SSD, copying the windows partitions but leaving the other partitions holding user files as-is. Macrium shrunk the Windows partition from 433GB to 218GB so the new Windows partitions would fit on the 250GB SSD.

After the clone completed, I went into the BIOS and set the boot drive to the SSD (I didnt have to temporarily disconnect the SATA HDD to get it to boot from the SSD).

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.