Adding 2.5 SSD in the 3.5 HDD Bay

[JoeBoJoe]

Hello, 

I have an HP Omen Obelisk, Intel I9, GTX 1660, 1TB HDD and 256GB SSD. Bought almost exactly one year ago. I can provide additional info if needed. 

I am looking to add more storage, and there’s an additional 3.5” HDD bay that’s empty. With games getting more and more advanced, I feel like it’s beneficial to get an SSD. I can easily find a 2.5” SSD, the mount/adapter to fit a 3.5” bay, and SATA III cables on Amazon.

Is it really as easy as just switching out the SATA cables for SATA III, plugging it in and booting up? Or would I have to change BIOs or do some additional steps? I am fairly new to PC’s and haven’t made any modifications to the one I bought. I also would have no idea how to change out the SATA cables, if someone could help with that too. 

Thanks!

[wb2001]

@JoeBoJoe,

You have the grasp of the installing and connections. The last thing is that the new drive needs to be formatted to accept data. I would feel better if I knew the exact model number of this unit.  It that 256GB SSD an NVMe ? That would make a big difference in the reply I made below, and have a different reply, as games are usually defaulted to the boot device storage.

Press START button

Open Control Panel (you should be in Classic View).

Open Administrative Tools

Click to open Computer Management. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

In the left pane, under Storage, click Disk Management.

It will show you the existing devices, in descending order:

DISK0 likely the 256GB SSD   Stay away from that.

DISK1 should be a 1TB HDD (1TB drives format as 931 GB capacity)  Stay away from that.

The added drive should show up as Disk2.  It will show as "unknown".    (See GPT below, now)

Right-click an unallocated region on your 'new" hard disk, and then click New Simple Volume.

In the New Simple Volume Wizard, click Next.

Type the size of the volume you want to create in megabytes (MB) or accept the maximum default size, and then click Next.

Accept the default drive letter or choose a different drive letter to identify the partition, and then click Next.

In the Format Partition dialog box:  use GPT format, not NTFS.

To format the volume with the default settings, click Next.

Review your choices, and then click Finish.

 GPT format.........read here.

[banhien]

@JoeBoJoe 

Yes, that is a very simple plug-and-play for SATA drives. Please check to be sure you have spare SATA port with power.

Regards.

[JoeBoJoe]

Thanks for the reply! 

I am away from it as of now, but can reply with the product number shortly. I do know that the 256GB SSD is an NVMe, and has Windows installed on it, but the entire library of games I have are stored on the 1TB HDD, as far as I’m aware. 

Does this change the response you have or would it be the same process? 

[wb2001]

@JoeBoJoe,

If you are gaming from the 1TB, that is slow.  An NVMe is 6 times faster than any 3.5" mechanical HD.  A 2.5" SSD drive more reliable, but not easily faster (see # 7 on the list) than the 3.5" drive. That is based on the fact that either device would be subjected to the limitations of the SATA3 internal speed, typically 500MB/s.

[JoeBoJoe]

UPDATE: 

Model Number: 875-0034

 This is for context: there’s the NVMe SSD, the HDD in the first bay, and the second bay open with 2 cables, I’m assuming one is power and the other is a SATA. I know I would need the adapter to put a 2.5 inch SSD in there and a SATA III cable, but I don’t know where the current SATA goes to swap it out (I may be wrong, but it looks like it goes directly into the power supply?)

[wb2001]

@JoeBoJoe,

The hard drive on the left has both cables, the bigger is power, the smaller is data. I do not see those on the right as equal cabling.