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

[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.

[Cloud_1]

Walla53

  This is the burning question in everyone's mind. HP has the hardware on the motherboard, but has decided to disable it on the Best Buy laptops. One point of interest to note they are using that feature on laptops that cost considerably more. So ignore tha manual and stick to the fact that HP won't give you the option to upgrade anything that you aren't paying top dollar for. The paranoia that exists in that company goes so far as the encrypt the bios after diasabling all the menus. But alas even that can't provide for a glitch free experience, as my M7-n109dx is exhibiting the issues HP is known for. Malfunction IG display drivers, and BIOS/ Startup issues wher a new laptop straight from factory makes you reboot not once but 2 to get it "right". First poer cycle laptop freezes at bios screen, second cycle laptop does the crazy touch screen touch me everywhere at once syndrome....but then like the Monty Python castle in the swamp scene...yeah the third time that's it back to a normal laptop......REALLY? **bleep** over?

THANKS HP..... 

[ClaudEtteson]

Like most of you, I came here searching for answers to this burning question only to basically end up being burned cause of a suspected whitelist. On a more optimistic note, for those that haven't returned their units in frustration, you could simply opt to use the SATA III Evo 850 SSD like Walla said instead of the M.2 considering the specs and cost are on par. I'm running the 256GB 850 Pro in place of the 1TB drive now, no issues, no hiccups, recognized from the jump and running at full capability (6.0 Gb/s). I didn't even bother migrating as I didn't want to be bothered with the bloat and installed Windows 10 fresh. I've got a caddy with another drive from my old laptop in place of my optical drive and going to get a caddy cable kit in the future for the 1TB.  

Yes, I know it sucks that we can't utilize M.2 and are bottlenecked with SATA III but the much faster drives like the 950 Pro aren't even supported if someone managed to find a workaround for the port. Might as well bite the bullet till then, this system is STILL a beast considering the cost... Just food for thought.

[rwh77]

My operating system is on the SATA drive, and I did get an M.2 working in the slot.  But I thought about adding another SSD in the 2nd empty SATA bay.  What kind of connectors did you have to use - were they easy to find?

[ClaudEtteson]

If you got the M.2 to work you might either be using a very old BIOS version or using a variant of the Envy 17t, most folks with issues have the n109dx, props to you either way.

As far as the 2nd drive, you'd need to check newmodeus for a HDD caddy and cable kit, it's a little under $50 but they're out of stock for the moment for this model.

[ClaudEtteson]

Actually they have them in stock through Amazon apparently but on their website it says out of stock, go figure

[soundprizm]

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@rwh77 wrote:

My operating system is on the SATA drive, and I did get an M.2 working in the slot.  But I thought about adding another SSD in the 2nd empty SATA bay.  What kind of connectors did you have to use - were they easy to find?

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Would you mind sharing how you were able to get the M.2 working?

As for your question, ClaudEtteson is right on the money about adding another SSD in the 2nd empty bay.

[ClaudEtteson]

Hey soundprizm,
I believe you concluded with him before that he has a different model than us, according to the specs I think he has the n000 instead of the n100.

I even tried his method last night (turning of secure boot, enabling legacy, checking in disk management) with a Plextor M6E from my PC and it was a no go 😕

[rwh77]

Well, I've got the HP ENVY 17t Touch, M9X68AV.  Page 3 of this thread is where i originally wrote about trying to get the drive working.  It's a Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB M.2 3.5-Inch SSD (MZ-N5E500BW).  Most everything I was reading in terms of having problems was from people wanting to install the operating system on them.  For me, that wasn't a neccessity - I just needed additional storage with fast read/write times. 

I guess I was so focused on getting the laptop to recognize the drive with a letter name and why that wasn't happening that it never crossed my mind that it would need formatted.  I wasn't seeing it in my list of drives so I started searching for a solution.  I tried a couple of things in the BIOS, but in the end, I went to the device manager and from there found my drive showing up just fine - as unformatted space.  I assigned it a drive letter name and, if I'm remembering right, did a quick format.  When that completed it showed up in my list of drives with the letter name I had assigned.  I named it something like 'Samsung SSD' and that was that.  

I really don't think my BIOS tweaks had anything to do with my success.  I think I just simply needed to format the drive all along but had it in my head that it should pop up with a drive letter name right after installation, which wasn't the case.