Replacing the SSD inside an HP Envy x360

[Mr_Tux]

I've had the same issue. I've spent hours and hours on this, and it's incredibly frustrating. It should be a relatively simple process that I've done several times before with other PCs. After this much frustration, this may be my last HP computer too.

[Mr_Tux]

Also, Rick,y can you used the recovery tool to install Windows on the new drive. I would be fine with this, as my laptop is new. Did you install the recovery tool on a USB flash drive, and then use that torto windows to the new ssd installed inside the laptop?

[Ric_G]

I didn't install anything no. The laptop dumps me into its own recovery tool after failing to boot, and within there is a "reset" option which just installs Windows again. So if you stick the new SSD in and use that option, you end up with a bootable Windows install.

The reset creates exactly the same partitions that were shipped on the old drive though, so assuming like me you're replacing the old SSD with a bigger capacity, you'll find the additional space isn't actually used. Presumably you can just resize the created partitions but frankly on this laptop I wouldn't be surprised if doing that just bricks it too. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Currently my new drive is now just back in its box. I have some adapters at hand now so can try a direct drive to drive clone, but I don't expect it to work. I'll try that this week and post back the results.

Haven't tried contacting HP Support as per Betty's latest reply. I thought this forum was HP Support, and if their telephone support says the same "we don't recommend upgrading" responses I'm honestly going to lose it with them.

It's utterly ridiculous that this doesn't just work.

[Ric_G]

I've now finally had chance to take fresh backups and give this one last shot.

Using two USB to SSD caddies, I connected both the old and new SSD drives to another computer, and this time used Lazesoft recovery suite to make a direct clone of the old drive. I did the sector by sector clone, and even chose to leave the partition sizes as-is despite the new drive having more capacity.

Once again the clone completed successfully, but installing the new drive into this laptop just brought up the black HP screen followed by the "something went wrong" message. The laptop rebooted itself twice, each time repeating the same message, and then dumped me in the recovery screen.

This simply isn't possible. I can't upgrade the SSD of this laptop without actually starting again from scratch with a vanilla Windows install, and I simply don't have time for that. I've spent money on a replacement SSD and two months later I still can't use it. Absolutely utterly ridiculous. What a waste of money HP laptops really are.

I can understand HP being funny about supporting people who want to replace motherboards or operating systems, but this is just a damned storage device.

[Ric_G]

Well, in the end I've added the SSD into another computer and ordered myself a new Asus laptop. Lots of reviews suggest that the Asus doesn't impose such ridiculous upgrade problems, and that I'll be able to install Gentoo without the laptop bricking itself on boot, unlike with HP.

I guess that's the fix then. Switch to Asus.