Adding Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD to HP Envy m7-n109dx

[soundprizm]

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@brandycmc wrote:

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@soundprizm wrote:

I have been trying the same thing with an Envy M7-n109dx, and I've been receiving the same exact results as you. One question, did you have an M.2 SSD already installed and are just upgrading, or did the laptop come without an M.2 ssd? I am concluding that it is either a compatibility issue or that the M.2 slot requires a hidden BIOS setting that we cannot access as is.

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To answer your question - my laptop came WITHOUT the factory installed SSD.  It was a single HDD model.

(I had previously purchased the SSD version, but sent it back after finding out that I could not install my own HDDs without paying HP well over £/$ 100 for the brackets, ribbon cables and adapter boards.)

I've been discussing this over on the notebookreview forum. too - including with MarkH who managed to get the Samsung Evo 850 SSD working.  You'll see from the discussion that I'm pretty sure it's the HP BIOS.

Mark is running a very early one:  F.1 revA.  My laptop came with F.24.  I cannot downgrade to F.1 beacuse HP only offer F.21 and F.16 on their downloads page.

So Well Done Again HP.  My laptop is now being sent back to you.  All I wanted from you was a laptop with a decent SSD and an HDD, and you've managed to bugger that up.

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Thanks for the reply! You have pretty much confirmed my BIOS theory. I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but I think it's just a "port-switch" thingamajigger--kind of like how in some BIOS's it allows you to switch off certain SATA ports and what not. HP does have one previous BIOS version named "F.11," but it won't upgrade our model because the file doesn't include our 80e6.bin. I haven't given up yet, and I'll check out the thread over on the notebookreview forum.

[brandycmc]

soundprizm wrote:

Thanks for the reply! You have pretty much confirmed my BIOS theory. I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but I think it's just a "port-switch" thingamajigger--kind of like how in some BIOS's it allows you to switch off certain SATA ports and what not. HP does have one previous BIOS version named "F.11," but it won't upgrade our model because the file doesn't include our 80e6.bin. I haven't given up yet, and I'll check out the thread over on the notebookreview forum.

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We have come to similar, but ever-so-slightly different conclusions!

I think HP have created a 'whitelist' of allowable SSD, and only those SSDs will work.  You think they've disabled the port altogether.  Funny how we've both gone for malicious conspiracy theory answers though - rather than the 'HP just didn't test the new BIOS against Sansung SSDs and it was all an unintentional muck-up'  theory.

[rwh77]

Any update on this issue?  I'm having the same problem with the same Samsung 850 m.2 500GB drive.  Thanks!

[brandycmc]

My update is that I sent both Envy machines back for a refund, and am now the very happy owner of a Dell XPS.
Yes it was significantly more expensive - but was so worth it.

[rwh77]

Very cool. Thanks for responding!  Last night actually, I was able to sort my issues out.  I picked up something on another thread [dealing with another make/model of laptop] that mentioned disabling 'secure boot' from the Bios.  After I did that and rebooted I still wasn't seeing the drive listed along with my C: drive and DVD drive [E:] - but I went into Disk Management and the storage space was showing there.  I was able to right click, format the drive, assign it a drive letter name and...  ka boom ...  it showed up  in my list of drives with the drive letter [F:] that I had assigned.  From there I just named it 'Samsung SSD' so it could have an identity haha. 

[soundprizm]

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@rwh77 wrote:

Very cool. Thanks for responding!  Last night actually, I was able to sort my issues out.  I picked up something on another thread [dealing with another make/model of laptop] that mentioned disabling 'secure boot' from the Bios.  After I did that and rebooted I still wasn't seeing the drive listed along with my C: drive and DVD drive [E:] - but I went into Disk Management and the storage space was showing there.  I was able to right click, format the drive, assign it a drive letter name and...  ka boom ...  it showed up  in my list of drives with the drive letter [F:] that I had assigned.  From there I just named it 'Samsung SSD' so it could have an identity haha. 

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Which model do you have?

[rwh77]

HP ENVY - 17t Touch Laptop Product number: M9X68AV Serial number: (removed content)

•Security Software Trial •Office Software Trial •12GB DDR3L - 2 DIMM •1TB 5400 rpm Hard Drive •6-cell 62WHr Lithium-ion Battery •Intel 802.11ac WLAN and Bluetooth(R) [2x2] •HP TrueVision HD Webcam with Dual Digital Microphone, Fingerprint Reader •Backlit Keyboard •SuperMulti DVD burner •6th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ Quad Core Processor + NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M 4GB Discrete Graphics •17.3-inch diagonal Full HD WLED-backlit IPS Display (1920x1080) Touchscreen •Windows 10 Home 64

I should also add that when I first installed the drive and booted up, for some reason, it never crossed my mind that the drive would need formatted so I didn't initially look in the Device Manager or Disk Management to see if the drive was there.  Perhaps I never needed to disable Secure Boot and the drive was there all along.  I'm certainly curious and would be willing to do some backtracking and troubleshooting if it would be helpful to anyone.  Also, I did make one other change in the BIOS at the time of disabling Secure Boot - I enabled Legacy Support or Legacy Boot - can't recall the exact name.  All that did was 'light up' the grayed out boot devices and give me access to change the boot order. Of course, my SSD was not showing on the list of boot devices and I made no changes to the boot order.

[soundprizm]

Thanks! That's a different model than the m7-n109dx; which is the model I have. I was hoping that I overlooked something after reading your posts. I'm glad you got it working though!

[rwh77]

Thanks - yeah I'm glad it's working.  There are quite a few threads out there discussing UEFI vs Legacy Boot.  It's something I don't really understand, but perhaps that played a part in my device being recognized - not sure.  If that's the case, you would think it possible that disabling Secure Boot and/or enabling Legacy Boot could solve the problem of an unrecognized SSD on other HP models.  It certainly makes me curious. 

[soundprizm]

Well, I can tell ya that UEFI and Legacy BIOS recognize partitions differently. UEFI needs a GPT partition scheme, while Legacy needs MBR; however, that pretty much just has to do with booting the OS. As long as the UEFI/BIOS can recognize the drive, the OS will be able to as well.