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

[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.

[brandycmc]

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@rwh77 wrote:

Very cool. Thanks for responding!  Last night actually, I was able to sort my issues out. 

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No worries. Hopefully it will help others who actually have real BIOS issues with their SSDs not even being recognised - and who need to know it's not just them and that there are great alternatives out there.

Glad to hear your problem was surmountable, and was just about a little bit of knowledge around disk management.

[Walla53]

Just attempted the installation of a Samsung m.2 card in a new M7-N109DX with a Fedruary 2016 build date. It came with BIOS F.31 which I updated to F.35. I attempted everything suggested on this site and none of them worked. I called Samsung Tech support and HP Tech Support and they were no help. HP finally declared that the m.2 card was defective. Samsung said all systems normally come with the M.2 port disabled and I would need to enable it in the BIOs.

Finally decided to install a Samsung EVO 850 SSD500 GB  in place of the 1TB HDD. This install went without issues using the Samsung software, sata to usb cable, and about an hour for the cloning to finish. Installed and the SSD booted without any issues. Still wonder why the m.2 slot is not enabled.